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STORIES FROM 

> 

LOUISIANA HISTORY 



BY 



GRACE KING, 

Author of 
'New Orleans, the Place and the People^ 
"De Soto in the Land of Florida" etc. 



JOHN R. FICKLEN, B. Let. 

Professor of History in Tiilane Uniz'ersity of Louisiana. 

Ant ho I of 
''History and Civil Government of Louisiana," etc. 



NEW ORLEANS: 
THE L. GRAHAM CO., LTD. 

1U05 






LIBRARY Of OONGRESS 

StP. 2 1905 
y ;? (p c?t^ 



8^. 



L 



OgpY 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1905, 

By grace king and JOHN R. FICKLEN, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. O. 



Preface 



This book of ^'Stories from Louisiana History" is 
intended to lead up to the authors' History of 
Louisiana, which has been used for more than a 
decade in the i)ublic scliools of the State. It relates 
in greater detail and in simpler form the romantic 
incidents in the early history of the Mississippi 
Valley. 

Though the "Stories" have been prepared for 
very young readers, the authors have been able, in 
a large part of the book, to give them word for 
word from the original sources. The narratives left 
us by the first explorers and settlers tell in the 
simplest and most stirring language of the dan- 
gers and hardships they themselves endured. 
Thus, at the beginning of their studies, the young 
people may taste one of the highest joys of the his- 
torian ; they may feel themselves in direct, intimate 
touch with the men who made our history. 

The "Stories," it will be found, are true in every 
particular. Not a single detail has been introduced 
from the realm of fiction. 

It should be added that the first portion of the 
book, down to the Revolution of 1768, was written 
by Miss King and the remainder by Mr. Ficklen. 
The latter wishes to express his obligations to his 
wife for her aid in preparing the story of the 
"Great Purchase," and both authors desire to 
thank her for designing the cover. 

If the present volume meets with favor, the 
authors purpose to issue another covering the 
period from 1815 to the present time. 



Contents. 



PAGE. 

The Finding of Louisiana i 

The Adventures of Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca 6 

Narvaez and His Three Hundred Horsemen. The Story 
of Cabeza de Vaca. 

DeSoto's Search After Gold 24 

He Lands' in Florida. The Plot of Vitachuco. The Lady 
of Cofachiqui. DeSoto at Mauvilla. He Finds the 
Great River. Death of DeSoto. The Escape of 
DeSoto's Followers. 

French Explorers 60 

The Pioneers. Marquette and Joliet. 

LaSalle 75 

LaSalle's Vast Plan. In the Great Lakes. The Illinois' 
River and the Illinois Indians. The Loss of the 
"Griffin." Bad News From Tonty. The Naming of 
Louisiana. 

LaSalle's Last Voyage 114 

Fort St. Louis in Texas. Murder of LaSalle. 

Iberville 138 

His Exploration of the Mississippi. The First Capital. 
Bienville Visits the Indians. Bienville's Journal. 
Chang-e of Capital. 

Bienville 182 

First War of the Natchez. 

The Company of the West 199 

The Founding- of New Orleans. The Second Natchez 
War. Recall of Bienville. 

The Natchez Massacre 212 

Last Campaigns of Bienville 219 

Defeat of the French. 
The Revolution of 1768 229 

The Treaties. The Coming of Ulloa. Departure of 
Ulloa. The Death of the Patriots. 
The Great Purchase 243 

Jefferson and Napoleon. The Bath-tub Scene. 

The Change of Flags in New Orleans 264 

New Orleans in 1804 268 

The First Steamboat on the Mississippi' 272 

The Lafittes 278 

The Battle of New Orleans 288 

The Strug-gle of January 8th. 

Timrod's Ode 303 

Maps, etc. 

Map of Mississippi Valley 66 

Plan of New Orleans, 1728 206 

Map of United States, 1803 256 

Sketch of New Orleans, 1803 265 

The Battle Field 293 



THE FINDING OF LOUISIANA. 



When Columbus, in 1492, sailed from Spain upon 
his great vo^^age of discovery, very few people be- 
lieved in him and man^^ looked upon him as a kind 
of madman. But when he came back bringing the 
account of the new and beautiful land he had found 
^n the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and show- 
ng the gold and pearls he had found there, the 
battering i3arrots and queer animals, and strang- 
est sight of all, the six tall, handsome Indians in 
their war paint and feathers ; then all the greatest 
men in Spain were proud to honor him; the King 
and Queen gave him a royal reception, and the 
people crowded the streets to see him pass, pointing 
him out to the children so that they could say in 
their old age they had seen the great Columbus. 

It was so hard for Columbus to get money to 
hire ships and men and buy provisions for his first 
voyage, that often he was on the ii#int of giving 
up his glorious enterprise. But, when he was get- 
ting read}^ for his second voyage, more money than 
he needed was given him ; ship captains were eager 



2 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

to sail with liim and from all over Spain came 
young men begging to go with him. 

The first land that Columbus discovered was 
one of tlie West India islands, and the first settle- 
ments he made in the New World were upon the 
islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. .At these two 
islands the ships from Spain landed all the men 
and the provisions and arms and ammunition that 
came over to the New World, and from these two 
islands set out all the "adventurers," as they were 
called; the men who, after Columbus had shown 
them the wa^^, wished also to discover new lands 
and find gold and pearls and strange men, birds, 
and animals; and to go back to Spain and be re- 
ceived by the King and Queen, and be followed on 
the streets by crowds of men, women, and children. 
And so, by these, in the course of a few years. South 
America, Central America, and all the islands of 
the Caribbean Sea, and Mexico, and Florida were 
discovered and made known. 

What drew the Spanish adventurers to South and 
Central America and Mexico, was the stories told 
of the gold to be found there. But the story that 
the Indians told the Spaniards about Florida was a 
different and far prettier one. They said that in 
the land of "Bimini," (this was the Indian name 
for Florida), there was a most wonderful fountain. 



THE FINDING OF LOUISIANA. 3 

whose waters when one drank of it gave eternal 
youth. There were no old Indians over there, only- 
young and beautiful ones. 

This story came to the ears of an old Spanish 




PONCE DE LEON. 



4 STOKIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

knight, in Cuba, Juan Ponce de Leon, and he be- 
lieved it to be true. No gold nor lands in the 
world seemed to him to be worth having, when he 
thought of the Fountain of Eternal Youth. He 
longed to drink the magical waters and become 
what he was twenty years before, when he followed 
Columbus to America. He went to Spain and ob- 
tained permission of the King to conquer the land 
that held the Fountain of Eternal Youth, and so 
make it his own. 

'He came in sight of the land of Bimini on 
Easter Sunday, 1513, and called it the land of 
Florida, because in Spanish, Easter is called Pascua 
Florida, the flowery feast. But the Indians fought 
him so fiercely that he could not land, and he had 
to sail away again. He tried once more with an- 
other expedition, several years later, when he was 
in still greater need of the waters of the Fountain 
of Youth. This time he was not only driven away 
by the Indians, but was shot by an arrow and he 
died of the wound. 

Again and again, after him, did the Spaniards 
try to land in Florida and make the country their 
own. They did not believe, as he did, in the Foun- 
tain of Youth, but they believed other tales just 
as untrue, which were told them by the Indians of 
Cuba, about great villages filled with gold and 



THE FINDING OF LOUISIANA. 5 

precious stones, and wealth enough to make each 
man of the army rich for life. 

They fared, however, no better than poor, old 
Ponce de Leon. As soon as their boats would ap- 
pear on the coast, the Indians would SAvarm out of 
the woods in wild fury and attack and drive them 
away. Pineda, the commander of one expedition, 
did not attempt to land where the others had failed, 
but sailed along the coast, looking for a more favor- 
able spot. Thus he sailed all the way to Mexico and 
back again, coming upon a great river with three 
mouths that poured a vast volume of muddy water 
into the Gulf. He named the river the ^^Espiritu 
Santo,'' the river of the Holy Spirit, because he 
came to it on Trinity Sunday. He sailed up the 
river and stayed fort}^ days with the Indians living 
on its banks. As the Espiritu Santo was the Mis- 
sissippi, Pineda may be called the first explorer of 
Louisiana. 



THE ADVENTURES OF NARVAEZ AND 
CABEZA DE VACA. 



Narvaez and His Three Hundred Horsemen. 

Pampliilo de Narvaez was the next one to 
attempt tlie conquest of Florida. His fleet of five 
ships carried not only the men and arms to conquer 
the country, but the mechanics and laborers and 
implements to cultivate it. He did not intend to land 
in the same place as those who had gone before, but 
as near as possible to Mexico. A storm, however, 
caught his fleet and drove it into Apalache Bay. His 
pilot made him believe that he was not far from 
where he intended to land, that is, from the bound- 
ary of Mexico. And so he landed his men and or- 
dered his ships to follow along the coast whi'le he 
marched inland with three hundred horsemen to ex- 
plore the country. They came to an Indian village 
which was deserted and took possession of it. But 
the next day the Indians returned to it and, by 
angry words and gestures, seemed to order the 
Spaniards out of their country. Well would it have 



THE ADVENTURES OF NARVAEZ. T 

been for Narvaoz had lie heeded the warning. In- 
stead he pushed forward into the land looking for 
gold. What met his eye was not gold, but a bare 
country with empty villages, thick forests, deep 
rivers, and great swamps. The army marched fif- 
teen days without seeing a native, living on the 
corn they carried and on the palm roots they gath- 
ered, and so were nigh on to starvation when they 
met a large body of Indians, who instead of fight- 
ing them, received them kindly and led them to 
their village, where they could rest and get food. 
When they set out again they found the same for- 
ests, swamps, and rivers before them, the same want 
of food. The Indians that they met were some- 
times friendly, sometimes cruel. The largest and 
most comfortable village they came to was the 
Apalache village. It contained forty cabins and 
was situated in a beautiful forest, well stocked with 
game, deer, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, wild ducks, 
and birds. The warriors had fled from the village, 
but the squaws with their children were there. 
The next day, however, the warriors returned, took 
the women and children away, and that night at- 
tacked the village, and set it on fire. The Spaniards 
escaped to the swamps. And then the Indians gave 
them little peace. They shot at them from behind 
the trees, and always made their escape before the 



8 «T()UIKS FliOM LOUISIANA IIISTOIiY. 

heavy-footed Spaniards could catch up with them. 
The Apalaches proved themselves then, as after- 
wards, the fiercest and bravest of the Florida In- 
dians. The}^ were splendid looking men, large and 
well formed, and their bows were as thick as a 
man's arm and from ten to twelve feet long. They 
could send an arrow two hundred feet, and never 
missed their aim. 

Xarvaez at last decided to turn back and march 
towards the sea to meet his ships. But this march 
was the worst of all, for he had to make his way 
through swamp after swamp, and in every swamp 
to fight the Indians, sometimes standing waist deep 
in the water, and his men were always starving 
for food; for now the Indians not only deserted 
the villages at their approach ; they burned them 
and the food in them. 

When the Spaniards arrived at the sea, they were 
all sick and weak and longed for nothing so much 
as to leave the dreadful country they had come to 
conquer. And never had their eyes looked so keenly 
for gold, as they now looked over the blue gulf in 
search of their ships. Not one was in sight. What 
had become of them? Narvaez never knew. What 
were the army to do? They could not live where they 
were. To march again inland meant sure death at 
the hands of the Indians. Thev saw but one chance 



THE ADVEXTUUES OF NAliVAEZ. 9 

before them; to build boats and to sail along the 
gulf until they came to Mexico, for they still 
thought they were near the boundary of Mexico. 
But what had they to build boats with? Their tools, 
their iron, their nails, their hemp, their tar, their 
carpenters, all had been left in the missing ships; 
and they had no food, sorest need of all. 

But brave men find strength in the things that 
drive cowards to despair. The Spaniards set to 
work to do what they could with what they had, 
trusting in God for the rest. They melted down 
their spurs and what other iron they had, and made 
axes, saws, and nails of them. They gave their 
shirts for sails, they made ropes of their bridles 
and of the manes and tails of their horses and of 
palmetto fibre. They cut down trees, and though 
tiiey had not a ship builder among them, they 
planned and built five boats. They calked them 
with palmetto fibre and tarred them with pine gum. 
Every three days they killed a horse for food, and 
skinning the legs entire, they used the skins for 
water flasks. 

They began their task on the first of August. 
They finished it on the '20th of September, and two 
days later embarked, forty-eight or forty-nine men 
crowding into each boat. 

For thirty days they sailed along the gulf coast. 



10 STORIES FROM LOI'ISIANA HISTORY. 

landing where the Indians permitted, for food and 
water. The horses' skins not being properly cured, 
the water in them became putrid and unfit for 
drink. Their food was corn, which they parched 
when they could, but most of the time ate raw. 

The Story of Cabeza de Vaca. 

At the end of October, they came to a broad 
river,* pouring into the gulf such a volume of 
fresh water, that they were able to drink it; but 
the current was too strong for their frail, over- 
loaded boats. Narvaez's boat was lost, but the rest 
went on for many days. Cabeza de Vaca, the treas- 
urer of the expedition, who was in command of a 
boat, relates what then happened : "All in my boat 
were lying one on top of the other, and so near 
death that few of them knew that they were alive. 
Only the cockswain and I were left to manage the 
boat. He called to me to do what I could by my- 
self, for he felt that he was dying. A little before 
day, I thought I heard water breaking upon the 
shore, and I took up an oar and began to roAv in tlie 
direction of the sound. AVhen we were near, a great 
swell came and threw the boat high up on tlu 
beach. t The shock was so sudden and so great that 
all the dvinu: men came to themselves, and crawled 



*This was the Mississippi. 
t This was the present State o 



i Texas, 



THE STORY OF CABEZA DE VACA. 11 

from the boat on their hands and knees. We made 
a fire to warm ourselves, roasted some corn to eat, 
and found some fresh Avater to drink, and so little 
by little gained our strength. Later on about one 
hundred Indians came towards us, armed with bows 
and arroAVS. In our terror at sight of them the}^ 
seemed to us as big as giants. We did what we 
could to make friends of them. When they left us 
they promised to come next day and bring us some- 
thing to eat. By daylight they came bringing us 
fish and some roots, such as they ate. The next 
day, also, they brought us food. And now, rested 
and haying a supply of food, we decided that we 
would start again in our own boats. But we were 
hardly away from the land, when a great wave 
rolled over us, drenching us from head to foot. As 
we were naked and the Aveather freezing cold, the 
oars dropped from our numbed hands. Another 
waA^e rolled over us and capsized the boat, and Ave 
Avere throAAm back upon the beach again. We found 
some coals in the ashes Ave had left, and so kindled a 
fire, around which Ave la}^ to Avarm ourselves. 

^'That cA^ening the Indians came again bringing 
us food. When they saw the miserable state Ave were 
in, they took us Avitli them to their village, and gaA^e 
us a cabin with a great fire inside. It Avas noAV 
NoA^ember and there Avas but one thing for us to do : 



13 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

to pass the winter where we were. But the weather 
grew so terribly cold and so wet and stormy, that 
the Indians could no longer gather roots or catch 
fish to eat. And the cabins were so poorly built that 
they were hardly a shelter. And so from hunger 
and cold, our men perished until there were only 
fifteen left. And now the Indians Avere attacked 
with a sickness that killed half of them. At first 
they thought that we were the cause of their dying, 
and they made up their minds to kill us, and came 
to us for the purpose. But just then one of them 
pointed out how we, too, were dying, and told them 
if we had any power over life and death, we would 
surely save ourselves. And then we were spared. 
But the Indians insisted that we must be doctors, 
and so they would bring their sick and tell us to 
cure them. When we told them that we could not 
cure them, because we did not know how, they 
stopped bringing us food and starved us till we gave 
in. And to satisfy them, we Avould nmke the sign of 
the cross over them, and breathe upon the ailing 
spot, and then we would pray to God to cure the 
sick one, and turn the hearts of the Indians towards 
treating us well. 

^'And God heard our prayers. As soon as the sick 
ones were cured, the Indians would do without food 
themselves in order to give it to us ; and they gave 



THE STORY OF CABEZA DE VACA. 13 

US skins and little trinkets and ornaments. But the 
famine grew so great that I was once three days 
without eating; and it seemed to me that I could 
not bear life any longer. But I had to bear even 
more than this in the course of time. I was forced 
to stay with the Indians a year, when on account of 
their ill treatment of me, I ran away. I made my- 
self a trader among the new Indians, carrying my 
pack inland and along the coast, going once over 
a hundred miles. My wares were sea snails, and 
shells which the Indians use to cut with, and the 
little shells they use for money, and other trifles 
that I gathered. I brought back in exchange 
skins and a kind of red earth that the Indians pow- 
der their faces with, flints for arrow points, and 
reeds to make arrows. This sort of life suited me 
well. I could go and come as I pleased. I was not 
forced to work, and wherever I went I was well re- 
ceived by the Indians, who always set up great re- 
joicings Avhen they saw me coming. But what I suf- 
fered on these trips, it would take me too long to 
tell ; the dangers and hunger, the storms, the cold, 
when I was all alone in the wilderness. I lived 
nearly six years with the same Indians. I could have 
left them, but I wanted to take with me a Spaniard, 
Lope de Oviedo, who was still on the island where 
we first landed. His companions had all died as 



14 STOKIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

mine had. Every year I crossed over to the island 
and begged him to come with me to find our way, as 
best we could, back to the land of Christians, but he 
would always jjut me off until the next year. At 
last he consented to come with me and we started 
with a party of Indians. We met another party, 
who told us there were three other men, Spaniards 
like us, in a tribe further on. All the rest of their 
companions had died of hunger or been killed. 
They, with a party of Indians, were coming our 
way, and if we waited two or three days we could 
see them. When these Indians left us, our Indian 
masters began to ill treat us, beating us with their 
fists and sticks, threatening to kill us. Oviedo be- 
came frightened, and giving up, went back to the 
island. I went on alone. Two days later we met 
the Indians with the two Spaniards, Alonzo del 
Castillo and Andreas Dorante, and a negro named 
Estevano, who also was wrecked with us. When 
they saw me they could not believe their eyes, for 
they thought I was dead. I told them I was going 
to try to escape and make my way into the land of 
Christians. They agreed to come with me. We 
passed six months Avaiting for a chance to escape. 
But before the chance came, our Indian masters got 
into a quarrel, which ended in a fight ; and they 
broke up their camp and separated, going off in 



THE STOIIY OF CAKEZA 1)E VACA. 15 

different directions from one another, taking their 
slaves with them. It was one year before we three 
Spaniards got together again in the same spot as 
before. We then planned our flight for the full 
moon; when, as I told my companions, if they did 
not come, I would go alone. The month was Septem- 
ber. When the moon was full we met as agreed and 
set forth. We had nothing to eat but the fruit of 
tlie prickly pear, and no water to drink but the juice 
of that plant. On the first day's march we were in 
constant terror of being caught and taken again 
by the Indians we had left. About sunset we came 
to an Indian village. The Indians were pleased to 
see us. They knew who we were, for they had heard 
how we could cure the sick. That very evening 
some of them came to us, complaining that they had 
a pain in the head, and begging us to cure them. 
We blessed them and prayed over them, and they 
said the pain left them at once; and going to their 
cabins they came back bringing great quantities 
of roots with them and dried meats, which they gave 
us. And that night a number of other Indians came 
to us, saying that they were sick and asking us to 
cure them ; each bringing a piece of meat. We did 
not know where to put all the food they brought us. 
As soon as the Indians were blessed and cured, they 
set to dancing and singing and playing games, keep- 



IG STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

ing up their frolic all night. At the end of three 
days we began to ask about the country ahead of us, 
so as to go on with our journey. We were told that 
we would find plenty of prickly pears to eat, but 
few people, for they had all gone away to their 
winter homes; that the winter was cold in that 
country and Ave would find but few skins to cover 
ourselves with. When we had thought over all 
this, we decided to pass the winter with the Indians 
we were with. 

"And so we passed eight months. We calculated 
time by the moon, and during all this time we were 
besought on all sides to heal the sick. The Indians 
believed that we were really children of the sun and, 
therefore, gods. But all the time there was so little 
food that we starved. At last we got away from 
them, and advanced farther on in the country. We 
came to another tribe, where there was a great nuni-^ 
ber of sick, and where we suffered again from 
hunger and became so famished that we traded 
some nets we had and a skin, with the Indians, for 
two dogs, which we ate. After this food we thought 
we were strong enough to go on our way. And so 
we set out, praying God to guide us. It rained hard 
one day, and we lost our way in the forest, but when 
we came out on the other side of the forest, we saw 
some Indian huts. Onlv women and childrcD were 



THE STORY OF CABEZA DE VACA. 17 

in them, and they fell into a great fright when they 
saw us. They called to their men, who were afraid 
too; they came and hid themselves to watch us. 
They told us that they were dying of hunger, but 
that there was a larger village farther on. They 
guided us to it. The Indians here Avere also afraid 
of us at first; but after a Avhile they came up to us 
close enough to touch us with their hands. When- 
ever the}^ touched us, they touched themselves after- 
wards. They brought their sick to us, and begged 
us to make the sign of the cross over them, and then 
gave us what food they had, that is, the beans and 
fruits of the cactus. When they heard we wanted 
to go on further, they were grieved and when we 
left them, they cried. The next Indians we joined 
treated us very well.'- 

Travelling on thus from tribe to tribe, Cabeza de 
Vaca and his companions went so far north that on 
the other side of the mountains they saw the sea. 
But now, wherever they went they were followed 
by Indians, whose numbers grew larger and larger. 
They treated the white men as gods, but they ham- 
pered their escape and in fact tried in every way to 
prevent it. At last, after many adventures, the 
party came upon two women carrying loads of corn- 
meal. These told the Spaniards that the country 
where the corn grew was towards where the sun 



18 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

set. ''And now," says Cabeza de Vaca, "we told the 
Indians that we wanted to go where the sun set. 
They said that the people in that direction were too 
far away. We told them to guide us towards the 
North. They said, as before, that the people in that 
direction were too far off, and that we would find 
no food, and have no water to drink. At this we be- 
came angry and went to sleep in the woods apart 
from them. This terrified them ; they begged us no 
longer to be angry with them, that they would lead 
us anywhere that we wislied to go, even if they died 
on the Avay. 

''After three days' journey we stopped; and the 
next day one of our Spaniards and the negro set out 
with two Indian women as guides. They returned 
after three days, saying that they had found a vil- 
lage of houses, where the peoi^le had beans and 
pumpkins, and that they had seen corn among them. 
This news made us glad, and giving thanks to the 
good Lord, we set out and travelled towards those 
Indians. At niglitfall we came to their houses, 
where great rejoicings were made over us. We 
stayed here one day and the Indians guided us to 
their next village, where there were houses and food 
like their own. We stayed two days with them. 
They gave us beans and pumpkins to eat. Their 
way of cooking their food is this: They fill half 



THE STOUY OF CABEZA DE VACA. 19 

of a large gourd with water and throw into a fire 
a number of stones. When the stones are heated 
they take them up between sticks and drop them 
into the gourd until the water boils from heat. Then 
they put in the food to be boiled. Tliey keep the 
water boiling by taking out the cold stones and put- 
ting in hot ones. 

^^These were the finest of all the Indians we had 
seen; the strongest and most active, Avho under- 
stood our questions the quickest and answered them 
the best. We called them the ^cow nation,' because 
great numbers of wild cattle are killed along the 
banks of the river on which they live. 

"For seventeen days we travelled up this river. 
Then we crossed it and travelled onwards seventeen 
days more. Upon some plains that lie between 
chains of very high mountains we found a tribe who, 
for the third part of a year, eat nothing but the 
powder of stems ; and as we were there in that sea- 
son, we also had to eat it, until we came to a village 
again where there was an abundance of corn stored 
up. 

"Some of the houses here were made of earth and 
some were woven of cane. From this point on, we 
w^ent through hundreds of miles of country, with 
fixed dwellings and plenty of corn and beans. The 
people gave us coverings of deer skins and cotton, 



20 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

and beads and corals and turquoises. They gave 
US emeralds made into arrow heads, which seemed 
to be very precious. I asked them where they got 
them, and they said from lofty mountains towards 
the North, where there were great towns and very 
large houses, and that they bought them with the 
feathers'of parrots. They gave us also six hundred 
dried hearts of the deer for food. The women are 
treated better here than among the Indians we had 
seen. They wear a skirt of cotton that falls to the 
knees, and over it dressed deer skin ; all wear shoes. 

"Throughout all this country the Indians who 
were at Avar made friends with one another, that 
they might come to meet us and bring us presents. 
In this way we left the land in peace behind us. We 
taught the people by signs that in Heaven dwelt 
God, who had created heaven and earth, whom we 
worshipped and obeyed, and from whom came all 
good. So quick were they to understand us, that if 
we had known more of their language, we should 
have left them all Christians. 

"A day's journey farther on we came to a town at 
which we were detained fifteen days by rain. The 
river became so high we could not cross it. Here 
we saw the buckle of a sword belt on the neck of an 
Indian, and fastened to it the nail of a horse shoe. 
We asked the Indian what they were. He said they 



THE STORY OF CAREZA DE VACA. 21 

came from heaven. We asked who had brought 
them from heaven, and all the Indians answered 
that men who wore beards like us had come from 
heaven and to that very river, bringing horses, 
lances, and swords; and that they had killed two 
Indians with their lances. With all the calmness 
we could put on, we asked what had become of the 
men. The answer was that they had been seen going 
towards the sunset, on their way to the sea. We 
gave mau}^ thanks for this to God, for we had given 
up hope of ever hearing again of Christians, and 
we made greater haste than ever on our journey. 
And as we went along we heard more and more of 
these Spaniards. We told the Indians that we were 
going in searcli of the Christians, to order them not 
to kill any more Indians or to make slaves of them, 
or take their lands from them, or to do them any 
more harm. The Indians were glad to hear this. 

''We now passed through great spaces empty of 
inhabitants. The people had fled to the mountains, 
not daring to live in their houses or till their ground 
for fear of the Spaniards. It was a painful sight 
to us, for the land was fertile and beautiful, with 
plenty of springs and streams ; but the villages were 
deserted or burned, and the people thin and weak, 
hiding or flying from the Spaniards. As they did 
not plant, all they had to eat was roots and the 



22 STOUIKS FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

bark of trees. They told us liow the Spaniards had 
come through their land, destroying and burning 
their villages, carrying away half the men and all 
the women and boys, while those that escaped were 
wandering about as fugitives, not daring to stay 
in any one place. They said they would rather die 
than live in dread of such cruel treatment as they 
had received. 

"They took us to a town on the edge of a range of 
mountains, the way to which is over high, steep 
crags. We found many Indians hiding here in fear 
of the Spaniards. But they received us well and 
gave us of what they had with them. They gave us 
more than two thousand loads of corn, which we 
gave to the poor hungering beings that had guided 
us here. We set out the next day with all the 
Indians. The tracks of the Spaniards and marks 
of where they had slept were seen all along where 
we passed. On the morrow, in the afternoon, we 
came to a place where we saw the stakes to which 
they had tied their horses. When we saw such sure 
signs of Christians and heard how near we were to 
them, we gave thanks to God our Lord for having 
chosen to bring us out of a captivity so sad and 
cruel. 

"The next morning I took the negro with eleven 
Indians, and following the Spaniards by their trail, 



THE STORY OF CABEZA DE VACA. 23 

travelled thirty miles, passing three villages at 
which they had slept. The following day I overtook 
four of them on horseback. At sight of us, so 
strangely dressed, they stood staring, neither hail- 
ing us nor coming near me. I bade them take me 
to their chief, w^hich they did. I told him of Castillo 
and Dorante, who were behind me, and of the mul- 
titude of Indians who were following them. He 
sent three horsemen and fifty of the Indians who 
were with him, to meet them. I asked the Spaniards 
to give me a certificate of the year, month, and 
day, and the manner of my coming to them, which 
they did.'' 

It was nine years since Narvaez and Cabeza de 
Yaca, and the five boat loads of men, had set out 
from Florida. Of the three hundred who went 
upon the expedition, only these three were saved. 
They had walked across the great extent of the 
present State of Texas and reached Mexico. 



DE SOTO'S SEARCH AFTER GOLD. 



He Lands in Florida. 

When Cabeza cle Vaca came back to Spain, he 
wrote an account of what he had seen and done 
in the New World. The King and his courtiers 
read it and wondered at it just as we wonder today. 
Thev tallvcd about it to one another, and whenever 
tliey had a chance they would question Cabeza de 
Vaca over and over again about the strange country 
he had been in, and ask for more and more stories 
about it. Cabeza de Vaca was as willing to tell 
about it as they to listen, and his stories, as the 
stories of travellers are apt to do, grew more won- 
derful the oftener he told them. But, instead of 
dwelling on the miseries he had suffered there, he 
pretended that even the most wonderful things he 
could tell about the beauty and richness of the 
country, and the gold and silver and precious stones 
in it, fell far short of the truth, for, as he said, he 
kept a great deal to himself, because he intended to 
go back and conquer it. Just at this time, there 
came to the court Hernando de Soto, one of the most 



DE SOTO'^S SEARCH AFTER GOLD. 



25 



noted cavaliers of Spain. He had gone to the New 
World when he was only a lad of sixteen, and had 




HERNANDO DE SOTO. 



just come back from the conquest of Peru with the 
fortune he had gained there. Now, Peru was one of 



26 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the richest countries that the Spaniards had con- 
quered/but when De Soto heard the stories told by 
Cabeza de Yaca, he came to think that the wealth 
of Peru was nothing in comparison to that of 
Florida. 

He hastened to the King and offered to make the 
conquest of- Florida at his own expense, if the King 
would only give him the permission to do so. The 
King consented, and De Soto and his friends at once 
threw all the money they had brought from Peru 
into enlisting men and buying ships and food and 
ammunition for the conquest of Florida. They 
engaged twelve priests to go with them to convert 
the natives, and took the supplies with them for the 
churches they intended to build and the settlements 
they intended to make. There was nothing talked 
about all over Spain but De Soto's expedition to 
the land of Florida, the land that was richer than 
Peru or Mexico; and from all over Spain came 
young and daring men to join it. The ships sailed 
in the spring of 1538, and landing in Cuba, De Soto 
spent the next winter there, buying horses and live 
stock, and more ships, to carry them. He set sail 
from Havana, and on a bright June day landed on 
the same part of the coast of Florida where Ponce 
de Leon had tried to land Avheu he came in search 
of the Fountain of Eternal Youth. Three hundred 



DE SOTO S SEARCH AFTER GOLD. Zi 

soldiers were sent ashore to raise the royal flag of 
Spain on the beacli and to proclaim that they took 
possession of the land in the name of the King of 
Spain. But they soon found that the conquest of 
Florida depended, not upon the consent of the King 
of Spain, but upon the consent of the Indians of 
Florida. 

That night, as they lay asleep in their camp, they 
were roused by a fearful clamor of shrieks and yells 
and blowing of horns; and before they could arm 
themselves, hundreds of naked Indians were leap- 
ing through the darkness upon them, and sending 
showers of arrows hissing into them. All that 
they could do was to run out into the water as far 
as they could, and sound their trumpets to the ship 
for help, which came just in time to save them from 
massacre. The whole army was then landed, and 
De Soto, finding a deserted village about ten miles 
away, marched to it, and camped there Avhile the 
ships were unloaded. When he was ready for the 
march inland, he learned from some prisoners that 
a man like himself, a Spaniard, Avas living in 
captivity in a village somewhere round about. He 
resolved that he would not move from where he was 
until he had found that nmn and delivered him. 
He sent two companies of horsemen in dilferent 
directions to search for the village where the Span- 



28 STOIilKS FROM LOI^ISIAXA HISTORY. 

iard was held a slave. One of the companies came 
back with nothing' to report, but six wounded men. 
The other company came walloping into camp, late 
in the night, bringing with them a naked, thin, 
scarred man ; a poor wretch who looked like a 
savage and seemed no better than one. He had been 
found with a party of Indians, who ran to the woods 
when they saw the Spaniards coming. The horse- 
men overtook only two of them ; one they killed, the 
other one turned and nuiking a great sign of the 
cross in the air, called out "'Sevilla! Se- 
villa!'^ ''Are you a Spaniard?'' called out the horse- 
man, who was about to kill him. ''Yes! Yes!'' he 
answered. The horseman, who was one of the 
strongest men in the Spanish army, stooped down, 
picked up the man with one hand, threw him over 
his saddle, and galloped off with him to his captain, 
who then brought him at full speed to the camp. 

He told his story to De Soto. He said that his 
name was Juan Ortiz, and that he had come to 
that coast nine years before in a ship sent out from 
Cuba to search for some tidings of Narvaez and his 
expedition, wlio had not been seen or heard of b^^ 
the ships which came back, according to their agree- 
ment to bring sui)])lies. Now, Narvaez had shown 
himself most cruel to the Indians of that coast. He 
had seized the chi(^f, Hirrihigua, cut off his nose, 



DE SOTO^S SEARCH AFTER GOLD. 29 

and, most horrible of all, had thrown the chief's old 
mother to the blood hounds, and she was devoured 
before the eyes of her son. When the savages, 
therefore, saw another Spanish ship coming 
towards their land, they determined to revenge 
themselves. They sent messengers to it, pretending 
that they had papers left by Narvaez, which they 
said they would give to the Spaniards, if they came 
for them. Four warriors were sent to stay on the 
ship, while four Spaniards went for the papers. But 
the boat that carried the Spaniards had hardly 
touched the beach, when the four warriors sprang 
with a great leap from the ship into the water and 
swam aAvay like fish. The four Spaniards were 
seized and dragged off in great glee into the woods. 
Juan Ortiz was one of them. They were dragged to 
that very village in which DeSoto was then camped, 
and were taken before its chief, Hirrihigua. He 
kept them under careful guard until the great feast 
time of all the tribes. Then they were stripped, and 
one by one, driven into the open space in the middle 
of the village, around which stood Indian warriors, 
with their bows and arrows. One by one three of the 
captives were chased like wild beasts and shot to 
death. When Juan's turn came, and he was driven 
into the space, he looked so young, almost a child, 
that he moved the heart of the chief's wife, and she 



30 «T()IUi:S FllOM LOl'ISIANA HISTORY. 

begged so tenderly for mercy, that she moved the 
heart of the pitiless warrior, and he gave her Juan 
to be a slave. 

But after sparing him, Hirrihigua, whenever he 
remembered the fate of his mother, would turn upon 
Juan with fury, and his life became so hard that he 
often thought it would have been better for him to 
have been killed at once with his companions. Every 
feast day he would have to play wild beast for the 
amusement of Hirrihigua, and be chased and pelted 
with blunt arrows from sunrise to sunset. One day 
he was seized and tied upon a frame and laid upon 
a great bed of live coals, and was half roasted before 
the good squaw, the wife of the chief, heard of it 
and rushed to the spot, and with her own hands 
loosed him from the frame and dressed his wounds, 
bitterly reproaching her husband and the warriors 
for their hard-heartedness. Finally, his misery be- 
came so great that the good woman helped him to 
escape to a neighboring chief, who pitied him and 
treated him kindly, and there he had been ever 
since. When the Spaniards heard Juan's story, and 
saws the scars of ill treatment on his naked body, 
they wept tears of pity for him and gratitude to 
God for returning him to his people. The next day 
handsome clothing was given him, but he had gone 
naked for so long that he could not at first bear 



DE SOTO'S SEARCH AFTER (JOLD. 31 

anything on his slvin. He became one of the most 
useful men in the army to De Soto ; for as he knew 
the Indian and Spanish languages, he could be in- 
terpreter for both Spaniards and Indians ; and was 
also a good guide into the country. 

Three days after this, the army was drawn out in 
regular order, and started upon the march inland; 
and a beautiful sight it was. The men were all 
3'oung ; their bright new arms glittered in the sun ; 
their faces shone with the confidence that fame and 
fortune lay before them. Between the vanguard 
and the rearguard came the well-packed baggage 
train and the priests ; and the i^ack of blood hounds, 
which always went along with the Spanish army in 
the conquest of the New World ; and there was also 
a goodly herd of swine to supply fresh meat. Pleas- 
ant enough was the march at first. The more the 
Spaniards saw of the countr^^, the better they liked 
it; and, indeed, how could they have asked for a 
better? The soil was rich ; with fine forests of oak, 
pine, mulberry, and many other handsome trees 
that they did not know ; and the trees Avere twined 
with vines bearing heavy bunches of grapes. The 
villages were large and well built, and although 
they were deserted, the Spaniards found them filled 
with food. 

When he came to one of the great swamps that 



32 STORIES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

line the coast of Florida, De Soto would halt until 
he could find an Indian to guide him through it. If 
the guide did not lead faithfully, he was thrown to 
the dogs, and another guide found, who, dreading 
punishment, led the army safely. The Indians of 
Florida, howeyer, proyed by far the fiercest fighters 
that he had eyer met, and he found them Ayhereyer 
he marched. If his road lay through the forest, the 
Indians sw^armed from behind the trees, shot their 
volleys into the midst of his men, and then made 
their escape, laughing and jeering at the slow-footed 
Spaniards. When a stream was to be crossed, their 
canoes would dart from behind bushes along the 
banks, and before the Spaniards had time to draw 
their swords or aim their guns, their men Ayere fall- 
ing about them. In the swamps the Indians 
ambushed them ; and then the two sides would fight, 
standing waist deep in Ayater. De Soto would 
question eyery prisoner, himself; asking if gold was 
to be found in the country and where he should go 
to find it. The Indians would always answer that 
there was no gold there, but that farther north 
there was plenty of it. And so eyer farther on- 
ward, eyer farther away from the coast, De Soto 
marched his army ; but he did not find what he was 
seeking for ; he did not find gold. He crossed yast 
forests, went around impassable marshes, built 



THE PLOT OF VITACHUCO. 33 

bridges over river after river, on the march. Every- 
where he found only rich lauds and prosperous In- 
dians, who were peaceful when the Spaniards were 
peaceful, fierce and cruel when the Spaniards of- 
fended them. 

The Plot of Vitachuco. 

Finally the army entered the territory of 
Vitachuco, a famous chief and warrior. De Soto, 
as was his custom, sent Indian messengers ahead of 
the army, bidding the chief to receive the Spaniards 
as friends and to furnish them with food during the 
march through the country. Yitachuco's reply was, 
''Tell the Spaniards not to enter my territory, for I 
promise them, however brave they may be, if they 
put their foot within it, they shall never get out 
alive; I will make an end of them all in it." But the 
Spaniards were not men to be frightened with such 
threats, and they marched on towards the land of 
Vitachuco, just the same as if he had promised 
friendship instead of enmity. Vitachuco then 
changed his tactics. He invited the Spaniards to 
his village, and began to make ready for a grand 
reception of them and a grand massacre of them 
afterwards. He came forward to meet the army 
with an escort of five hundred warriors in war paint 
and feathers, Vitachuco himself was about the 



34 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

same age as De Soto, fine looking and noble in his 
bearing. His village was a large and well built one. 
The Spanish army entered it in full military style, 
banners flying and band playing ; and for three days 
enjoyed the feasting and frolicking prepared for 
them. Then Vitachuco got ready to execute his 
l^lot. He ordered the neighboring tribes to send 
him their best warriors, and told them to hide their 
weapons in the grass of a great plain outside 
the village, while tliej came into it loaded 
with food and wood as if for the Spanish. 
When ten thousand braves had been thus collected, 
Vitachuco intended to invite De Soto and his offi- 
cers to go out into the plain and see a grand review 
of all his warriors. Vitachuco was to go with his 
bodyguard of twelve strong, daring warriors, who, 
at a certain signal, Avere to seize De Soto and his of- 
ficers. Then the assembled Indians were to grasp 
their weapons from the grass, rush into the village, 
and aid Vitachuco's men in killing the Spaniards. 
But Juan Ortiz found out the plot and told it to De 
Soto, who decided to meet trickery with trickery, 
and to take Vitachuco in the very trap he had pre- 
pared for the Spaniards. Orders were given to the 
soldiers to be on their guard, and twelve of the 
strongest men in the Spanish army were chosen to 
act as an escort to the General. When the day 



THE PLOT OF VITACHUCO. 35 

agreed upon came, a bright clieery morning, Vita- 
cliuco asked the Spanish General to go to the field 
Avith him, and see what a fine band of warriors he 
had. De Soto accepted with pleasure; but said he 
would hold a review of his arni}^ at the same time, 
to show the Indians what a fine band of soldiers he 
had. The Indian chief was much taken aback at 
this, but, confident in the greater number of his 
Indians, determined to carry out his plans. So he, 
with his bodyguard, and De Soto Avith his, rode to- 
gether to the field, where the Spanish army and a 
great body of Indians faced one another. De Soto 
and Vitachuco Avalked forward side by side to the 
spot Avhere each one was to giA^e the signal to his 
men to seize the other. De Soto gave his signal first. 
His twelve men thrcAv themseh^es upon Vitachuco 
and held him. The Spanish trumpets sounded the 
charge. De Soto, jumping upon his horse, held in 
readiness for him, spurred upon the surprised 
Indians with his battle cry; and he and his men 
charged over them as over a cornfield, trampling 
and crushing them to the earth, slaying them with 
their swords, right and left. The Spaniards Avere 
protected by their shirts of mail ; the Indians were 
in their naked skins. The Spaniards had swords 
and lances, the Indians only their boAA^s and arrows 
and rude stone tomahaAvks. Brave as the Indians 



36 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

were, the moment came when they could stand the 
slaughter no longer. They broke and ran towards 
the forests, and those who could outrun the horses 
escaped; the others were killed. Some ran toward 
a lake at one end of the field, and tliose that the 
horsemen did not catch and kill jumped into it. The 
Spaniards spurred their horses up to their necks 
into the water, but the Indians swam out of their 
reach. The Spaniards then surrounded the lake, 
and tried to make the Indians surrender, for there 
was no chance for them to escape. But all day long, 
the warriors withstood their foe, swimming round 
and round the lake, shouting out their defiances of 
the Spaniards, and shooting at them till all their ar- 
rows gave out. One warrior would mount on 
the back of five or six of his companions, and send 
off arrow after arrow until he had emptied his 
quiver. Then he would drop into the water, and 
another would take his place. The water was too 
deep for standing, the Indians had to keep swim- 
ming or drown. When night came on, the Spaniards 
lighted fires and kept up the watch around the lake. 
Sometimes a warrior swimming stealthily under the 
cover of a big leaf, held in his mouth to hide his 
head, would get safely to the edge of the land, but 
the Spaniards would thrust their lances at him 
and drive him back into deep water. The Spaniards 



THE PLOT OF VITACHUCO. 37 

thought that, by keeping the Indians swimming all 
night, they would tire them to surrender. But by 
daylight only a few had surrendered. During the 
following day, however, all came out of the lake ex- 
cept seven, who still swam about in the water, 
shouting their defiance of the Spaniards. When 
their voices grew faint and at last ceased, De Soto 
commanded twelve soldiers to go into the lake and 
fetch them out. This they did, dragging the Indians 
out and throwing them on the earth, where they 
lay as if dead. They had been thirty hours in the 
water without rest or food. 

In the meantime Vitachuco, raging with fury, 
was kept a close prisoner in one of the vil- 
lage cabins. Far from giving up his bloody 
designs, he set his mind upon executing them in 
some other way. It was true that his warriors were 
now captives and slaves of the Spaniards, their 
weapons had been taken away from them, and they 
were forced to cook for them, and serve them, 
but he counted that each Indian Avas good 
to kill one Spaniard, as he himself was to kill 
De Soto. He found a way to send word secretly 
to his men that on the third day from the fol- 
lowing, at noon, each one was to be ready to 
kill his master; the signal would be a war 
whoop, which he himself would give. And so, just 



38 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

one week from the last attempt, when the mid-day 
meal was being eaten in the Spanish camp, Vita- 
chuco, who eat at the officers' table, suddenly 
sprang up, and gave a war whoop. Then, seizing 
De Soto with his left hand he gave him such a blow 
with his right that the Spanish General hung like 
dead in his grasp, with his face crushed in and his 
teeth dashed out, as if a sledge hammer had struck 
him. But before Vitachuco could give another blow, 
which would have finished De Soto, the Spanish 
officers drew their swords and killed him. As the 
loud, clear, war whoop of their chief rang over the 
camp every Indian rushed upon his master with 
whatever he happened to have in his hand or could 
seize. Pots were jerked from their hooks over the 
fire, and the boiling food dashed over the heads of 
the Spaniards; tongs, pokers, fire irons, red hot, 
were used ; plates, dishes, chairs, tables. The Span- 
iards fell, stunned, burned, scalded. Many, like 
De Soto, had their faces crushed and teeth dashed 
out. But in a moment they were themselves again, 
calling to one another, seizing their weapons, jump- 
ing upon their horses, and now no mercy did they 
show to the Indians. Every man of them was killed. 
Four days later, the army, with bodies sore and 
stiff, and heads in bandages, drew out from the 
bloody village. But though they left the village ho- 



THE PLOT OF VITACHUCO. 39 

hind, they found the same people before them, the 
same fierce savages, for seventy-five miles along 
their march, fighting them by day, harassing them 
at night. Coming at last to the great village 
of the Apalaches, they took possession of it, 
and stayed in it all winter. As soon as 
spring came they set forth again npou their 
march. An Indian lad, captured during the 
winter, now acted as guide; for he said he had 
been reared by Indian traders, who used to 
take him great distances into the country, and that 
in a land called Cof achiqui, twelve or thirteen days' 
journey away, was to be found plenty of gold and 
silver. It lay, he said, to the North and towards the 
sunrise, as he called the East. In this direction, 
therefore, De Soto led his men, and entered new 
provinces, where he found a different kind of In- 
dians, kindly, peace-loving, domestic tribes,. living 
in comfortable villages, surrounded b^^ rich corn- 
fields. At every village, the Spaniards were 
received with presents of game and fruit ; and when 
they set forth again were given food to carry along 
with them. And the villages were better built than 
any yet seen in Florida. The cabins were thatched 
with cane, and the walls plastered with clay. In 
every cabin was a fireplace, and before the doors 
were porticos with benches or seats of cane. The 



40 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

men and women wore mantles of skin, or of stuff 
woven from grass, or the bark of trees, or fibre of 
nettles. The skins were so beaiitifuUj dressed that 
they looked like the finest cloth. 

The Lady of Cofachiqui. 

After about three weeks the boundary of the land 
of Cofachiqui was reached; a broad river, on the 
other bank of which lay a large village. The river 
is known today as the Savannah. The Spaniards 
calling loudly, some Indians came out of the village 
to the river bank ; but when they saw such strange 
men and strange beasts, they ran back into the vil- 
lage as fast as they could in great fear. Soon, how- 
ever, six warriors, splendid looking savages, came to 
the bank, and crossed the river in a canoe. Then, all 
coming forward together and making a low bow to 
De Soto : "Sir,'' they asked, "do you wish peace or 
war?'' "Peace," said the Spaniard, "not war" ; 
and, he added, "food for my men on their march." 
The warriors then told him that the village on the 
other side of the river was Cofachiqui, and that 
their chief was a young girl, to whom they would 
take the answer of the Spaniards. They then re- 
turned to their canoes and crossed the river. A little 
later, the Spaniards saw cushions being brought to 
two large canoes and a canopy raised over one of 



THE LADl* OF COFACHIQUI. 41 

them. After which the young princess was carried 
to the bank, seated on a litter that was borne upon 
the shoulders of four warriors. She placed herself 
in the canoe under the canopy, and was paddled 
over the river by eight Indian Avomen. When she 
landed, she came forward towards the Spaniards 
without fear, and seating herself at the side of 
De Soto began to speak to him with all the ease and 
graciousness of a perfect lady. The Spanish caval- 
iers were charmed, not only with her manners, but 
with her beauty, and they called her the "Lady of 
Cofachiqui." 

When she had finished talking, she took a string 
of pearls that she wore around her neck, and gave 
it to the Spanish general, and he took a gold ring 
set with a handsome ruby from his finger and pre- 
sented it to her. The next day the army crossed the 
river and took up their quarters in the village of 
the princess. 

When the princess was asked for the gold that the 
Indian lad had seen, she had brought forward great 
quantities of shining copper, which looked enough 
like gold to have deceived the boy. Her silver was 
only great slabs of shining mica. As for precious 
stones, she had none, she said, but pearls. If the 
Spaniards wished some of these, they might take as 
much as they would, from a temple that 



42 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

she showed them, the burial place of her tribe. In 
this temple and in one of a neighboring- village, the 
Spaniards did, indeed, find pearls enough to enrich 
each man in the army for life, and thousands of the 
finest skins dressed with the fur on, which in 
Europe would have been almost as valuable as 
pearls. But as the Indians told De Soto that there 
was still a richer country further North, he, un- 
mindful that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the 
bush," made up his mind to march there instead of 
taking what he found where he was. When the 
army left Cofachiqui, De Soto, forgetting the kind- 
ness with which the young princess, had received 
him, took her along as a prisoner, hoping to use her 
as a guide and to force her to make friends for him 
among the Indians on the line of march. But when 
he reached the limit of her territory, tlie princess, 
happily, made her escape. And now tlie Spaniards 
went forward nearly a month tlirough the land of a 
young cliief called Coosa, whose village was l)uilt on 
the bank of the Coosa river. The chief, like the 
•princess of Cofachiqui, lived in a rich, happy coun- 
try; but lie had no gold mines, to the great disap- 
pointment of the Spaniards. 
* 

De Soto at Mauvilla. 

The second winter of the Spaniards in Florida 
was now coming on, and with it the time set for De 



DE SOTO AT MAUVILLA. 43 

SoWs ships to meet him on the coast with more 
men, and arms and food. So he turned his army 
towards the Gulf, marching through Georgia, and 
entered into the territory of the Alabama tribes. 
Here he met his fiercest foe, the great Chief Tusca- 
loosa, and suffered from him a most crushing 
defeat. The army came in sight of him early 
one morning in a beautiful plain, where he was 
waiting in state to receive them. He was 
seated on his royal chair, a seat hollowed 
out of the solid wood. At his feet were spread 
beautiful mats, above his head was held a 
great banner of buckskin striped with blue. Over 
a hundred tall warriors in war plumes and hand- 
some mantles stood about him. Tuscaloosa was a 
giant in size, he was taller than the tallest Spaniard 
by a foot and a half, and was stout in proportion. 
His eyes were as large as those of an ox ; his shins 
as long as most men^s legs. As cunning as he was 
brave, he saw that it was folly to oppose the Span- 
iards in open battle, where they would have the ad- 
vantage over the naked Indians, armed only with 
bows and arrows. He determined to surprise and 
massacre them when they were off their guard. 
Therefore he came out as a friend, and invited them 
to his village of Mauvilla, and he went along 
with them to show the way. The Spaniards 



44 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

mounted him on the largest horse in the army, but 
when seated in the saddle he nearly touched the 
ground with his feet. At the close of a beautiful 
June day, they came to within five miles of 
Mauvilla and camped there. The next morning De 
Soto with a hundred cavaliers, followed by the pack 
bearers of the army with the luggage, set out with 
Tuscaloosa for the village. The rest of the army 
was ordered to follow as soon as they could break 
camp and pack their tents. Unfortunately they 
took their time about this. 

The village was surrounded by a great wall 
fifteen feet high, made of Avell grown trees driven 
into the ground close together, tied with vines, and 
plastered with mortar. A])out the heiglit of a man, 
loop holes for arrows had been cut, and about every 
fifty paces, towers had been built, which could hold 
from six to eight men. 

As Tuscaloosa and De Soto approached, the gates 
of the village were thrown open, and bands 
of warriors and beautiful Indian maids came 
out dancing and singing to meet them. The 
Spaniards rode into the street that ran from one 
end of the village to the other, and looked around 
them with astonishment. Instead of the small 
houses of the usual Indian village, they be- 
held great buildings like barracks, the smallest 



DE SOTO AT MAU VILLA. 45 

of which could hold five hundred and the larger 
a thousand or fifteen hundred men. Mauvilla was 
indeed the largest and strongest village in that 
country, and although the Spaniards saw few men 
and women walking about, Tuscaloosa had secretly 
summoned all his tribes there, and the buildings 
were packed with thousands of the fiercest Indians, 
watching eagerly the arrival of their enemies and 
the signal for the massacre. The Spaniards noticed 
also that there were no children in the streets. They 
learned afterwards that the children and old women 
had all been sent away. 

Tuscaloosa came to a stop in the open 
place or public square in the center of the 
village. Here, after pointing out a cabin where 
the Spaniards could go, he left them, and went into 
his own cabin, the largest one around the square. 
The Spaniards dismounted and sent their horses to 
graze in the open land outside the wall; while 
they waited for the rest of the army to arrive. 

After a short consultation with his braves, Tusca- 
loosa decided to kill first the Spaniards in the 
square, and then the others as they came into the 
village. A warrior stepped to the door, and, throw- 
ing it open, shot an arrow into the group of Span- 
iards in the square. A Spaniard, who happened 
to be standing near the door, drew his sword in a 



46 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

flash and cut the Indian open from shoulder to 
waist. A war cry then arose from all over the vil- 
lage, and from every cabin Indians rushed out 
upon the Spaniards. So great was their num- 
ber, and so wild and furious their rush, 
that the Spaniards were driven before it like leaves 
before a hurricane, and were cast out of the gate 
into the open field. And while one body of Indi-ans 
were pursuing them, another drove the Indian 
slaves and the pack-bearers of the Spaniards 
with all the luggage of the army into the village. 
The Spaniards leaped upon their horses, turned and 
charged into the Indians, and drove them back into 
their walls, where the gates were pushed to and 
barred. The Spaniards beat against the gates, but 
such a storm of arrows and stones fell upon them 
from the wall, that they were forced to retreat 
again, and again the Indians made a furious charge 
upon them. Dashing out of the gates and leaping 
the walk, they drove the Spaniards back and closed 
the gates against them. The Spaniards, holding 
their axes in one hand and their shields over their 
h^ads with the other, now rushed upon the gates, 
and with quick strokes cut them open, and charged 
into the broad open street of the village, driving the 
Indians before them. And now, before the Indians 
could turn again upon him, De Soto gave the com- 



DB SOTO AT MAU VILLA. 47 

inand to fire the cabins. In a moment flames and 
smoke burst out of the dry thatched roofSj 
and soon the village became a sheet of flame. 
The Indians then called out their women, who, 
grasping the weapons of their fallen warriors, 
stepped into their places and fought side by side 
with the men, and with as fine a courage as they. 

In the meantime the rest of the army, careless and 
lazy, advanced at their ease and leisure, the men 
scattered over the field, picking fruit, laughing, and 
talking like a picnic party. What was their horror 
when they came in sight of Mauvilla to see smoke 
and flames rising from it, and to hear within the 
walls the din and cries of battle. With a shout they 
rushed forward, and well it was for the Spaniards 
within the walls that they did so ; for De Soto and 
his men were fighting for their lives and with no 
hope save that their comrades would come in time. 
The Indians tried to head them off, and for a while 
the fight was as fierce outside the walls as in. But 
the number and fresh strength of the Spaniards 
soon told, and they made their way to the center of 
the village, where stood a great hollow square of 
warriors and women fighting like wild beasts. But 
their weapons were almost harmless against the 
Spaniards in armor and mounted on horseback, 
while the keen swords and lances of the Spaniards 



48 ST01UE8 FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

were deadly against their nalved skins. They 
fell like sugar cane under the stroke of the cutter. 
The horsemen leaped upon them from all sides, 
trampling them down and charging over them 
until the horses' hoofs trampled only the dead ; for 
not one would surrender; all died fighting, falling 
in heaps and rows where they stood. It was sunset, 
and both sides had been fighting for nine hours, be- 
fore the Spaniards at last won the day. The victory 
proved a bloody one to them. Eighty two of their 
men and forty-five horses were killed, and there was 
hardly a man in the army that had less than five or 
six arrow wounds ; many of them had ten or twelve. 
And this was not the worst. As all the army bag- 
gage had been captured and carried into the village, 
it was burned and the Spaniards had no medicines, 
no oil, bandages, or lint to dress the wounds; and 
no linen shirts or sheets even to tear up for 
bandages ; for all their clothing had been burned as 
well as all their food. They were so exhausted they 
could hardly stand on their feet ; but they went to 
work as best they could, each man helping the man 
who was worse off than himself. They made sheds 
of twigs and branches, as a shelter for the wounded. 
They stripped their dead companions of their shirts 
for bandages; they butchered the dead horses for 
meat to make broth to nourish them, and in addi- 



HE FINDS THE GREAT RIVER. 49 

tion stood sentinel duty; for they knew that a very 
small force of Indians could then have done what 
Tuscaloosa with all his braves had failed to do. It 
was eight days before the army could leave the spot, 
and three weeks before they could continue their 
march. 

Some Indians, captured after the battle, told De 
Soto that Spanish ships had been seen sailing in the 
Gulf, which lay not more than a six days' march 
from Mauvilla. 

He Finds the Great River. 

De Soto, as we know, had planned to go to the 
sea shore and meet these ships. When, however, his 
soldiers heard of them, they began to talk about 
leaving the country. They said they should never 
be able to conquer it; that they should all 
be killed, or should have to kill all the Indians 
in it before they could bring them under the 
yoke of Spain. They had found no gold in it, and 
there w^as no use staying there, wasting their time 
and strength, when they could go to Peru or Mexi- 
co, where the Indians did not fight so fiercely, and 
where gold and silver were plentiful. Therefore, 
they plotted that when they reached the coast, they 
would rise in mutiny, seize the ships and sail away 
from the land and their leader. When De Soto 



50 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

heard of this, he resolved to lead the army, without 
their knowing it, away from the sea coast, and so 
when he broke up his camp, he started, instead of 
South, due North again. 

Leaving the land of Tuscaloosa, he entered into 
the country of the Chickasaws, now the State of 
Mississippi. The Chickasaws were also warlike and 
independent, and the march through their land 
was not an easy one. They had no gold in their 
land, but they told of gold on the other side of a 
great river that flowed through it. And so the Span- 
iards marched to find this river and came to the 
Mississippi. It was the greatest river they had ever 
seen. It was so wide, they said, that if a man stood 
on the other bank it could not be told whether he 
were a man or not. It was of mighty depth and cur- 
rent and brought along down stream continually 
great trees and timbers. But even the ^lississippi 
could not stop the Spaniards in their search for 
gold. De Soto built rafts and crossed the army to the 
other side of the mighty stream, and took up his 
march again. But west of the INIississippi, as east of 
it, they found the same beautiful country, the same 
Indians, hospitable and generous in some places, 
fierce and cruel in others. The Spaniards marched 
I^orth into the rocky country where buffaloes 
roamed, then turned to the South again; then 



DEATH OF DE SOTO. 51 

turned again to the West, and still found neither 
the gold nor the precious stones, nor the great tem- 
ples, nor the populous cities, told of by Cabeza de 
Vaea. 

Another winter passed. The army had now 
shrunk to one-half, the horses to a small number; 
provisions and clothing were exhausted. The men 
were dressed in skins, and were living on the corn 
and fresh meat they took from the Indians. But 
still De Soto would not give up his expedition. 
He determined, on the contrary, to return to the 
Mississippi, and build boats to send to Mexico or 
Havana for more men, horses, and provisions, so 
that he could remain still longer in the land of his 
hopes. 

Death of De Soto. 

He readied the Mississippi at a point not far 
from where Red River joins it. Finding an 
Indian village there, he took possession of it, and 
set his men to cutting timber for the building of 
his boats, collecting vines for cordage, and pine 
gum and the gum of other trees to make pitch. He 
set up forges and began the work of making nails 
and fastenings out of what metal they had. The 
Indians round about were treacherous and threat- 
ening, and so besides building his boats, he had to 
keep constantly on the watch against an attack, 



52 STORIES FROM LOULSIAXA HISTORY. 

which, in the weakened state of his army, it would 
have been hard to repel. 

In the midst of his cares and anxieties he was 
taken ill with a fever, which never left him, but 
rose steadily until it reached such a height that 
he knew he should die of it. He prepared for death 
like a Christian and a soldier. He drew up his will 
and he confessed his sins. Then he called for his 
officers, cavaliers, and principal men of his army. 
When they had come and placed themselves around 
his bed, he told them that he was going to give an 
account, in the presence of God, for all his past life. 
He said he was much beholden to them for their 
love and loyalty to him, begged them to pray to 
God in his mercy to forgive him his sins,and he told 
them to choose some one among the ofifiters to take 
his place after his death. The officers and cavaliers 
begged him to name the man he thought fit, and 
they would obey him. He named Luis de Moscoso. 
Then he took leave of them all. He died in May, 
1542. 

The Indians believed De Soto to be a god. 
Should they find out that he was dead, Moscoso and 
his officers feared that they would set upon the 
Spaniards and overpower them. So they kept the 
death of the counnander a secret, and bade the 
soldiers go around with careless, gay faces, and tell 



THE ESCAPE OF I)E SOTO'S FOLLOWERS. 53 

the Indians that he was getting better. And they 
resolved to bury him in such a way that the 
Indians would never find his body. They cut down 
an oak tree, took the trunk of it, and hollowed it 
out like a coffin, and nailed tlie body of De Soto 
in it. And at midnight they carried him out 
to the deepest part of the Mississippi, and, in 
the darkness and silence of nature, they buried 
him beneath the waters. 

The Escape of De Soto's Followers. 

After the death of their leader, the Spaniards 
had but one idea, to get back to their own country, 
their homes, and their families. Leaving their un- 
finished boats, they started out to march across the 
land in a straight line to Mexico. They tramped 
from early morning to late at night, halting only for 
a few minutes at a time to eat and a few hours to 
sleep. They urged one another to go faster; it 
seemed to them they could not be speedy enough. 
They passed through the northern part of Louis- 
iana, fighting their way, for the Louisiana Indians 
opposed them just as the Florida and Alabama 
Indians had. They came to the province and 
tribe of the Natchitoches, and halted at their 
village, situated in the same spot as the 
City of Natchitoches today. From here they 



54 ST0RIE8 FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

marched onward still towards the West, until 
they passed out of the limits of the present 
State of Louisiana, and entered the vast regions of 
Texas. Through Texas they pushed on until they 
got beyond the tribes with fixed villages and corn 
fields, and entered the bare and sterile plains where 
Cabeza had suffered so greatly from the famine, the 
land of the Yacqueros, or Cowherds. Here Mos- 
coso suffered as keenly for want of food as Cabeza 
de Vaca and his companions had done. Still they 
pushed on, hoping to reach Mexico. At last, worn 
out with hunger and toil, they halted and sent men 
out to see what was the land ahead of them. These 
men returned with the report that the farther they 
went into the country, the poorer they found it. 
There were no villages, no corn fields in it ; the In- 
dians were a roving people, who Avent about in 
bands living upon wild fruits and herbs; and that 
the army would die of starvation in it long ere the}^ 
reached Mexico. Moscoso then saw that there was 
but one hope for them, and that was to get back 
to the Mississippi, and carry out De Soto's plan 
of building boats and going down the river to the 
Gulf and along the sea coast until they reached 
^lexico. 

He counted that they were about five hundred 
miles froni the river, And now the army, putting 



THE ESCAPE OF UE SOTO S FOLLOWERS. 55 

what streugtli was left in their bodies into their 
feet, strained day b}^ day to put those five hundred 
miles behind them. They started back at the 
beginning of October; the end of November over> 
took them still on the road. But through the keen 
winds, heavy rains, biting cold, they trudged along 
doggedly. Sometimes the heavy rains and great 
snow storms of the upper country swelled the 
streams so tliat the land overfloAved, and often they 
were forced to stand all night long in water up to 
their knees. With no food, no rest, no sleep, and 
spent with marching, it is no wonder that they 
sickened and died; more than one hundred good 
men and eighty horses. But no one stopped for 
sid^ness. They would hardly take time to bury the 
dead. At last they came again in sight of the 
Great River. The Spaniards, when they saw it, 
wept like children. Moscoso took possession of a 
deserted village on the bank, and as soon as his 
men were rested enough for work, he began the 
building of boats. Through February, March and 
April, they kept at their task, each man doing with 
might^and main what he was most fitted for. While 
some sawed the logs into planks, others hammered 
at the forge, turning chains and stirrups and any 
bits of iron that could be found into nails. In 
March the water rose and overflowed all the 



56 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

land, and nothing was to be seen but the 
tops of the cabins and trees. But the Spaniards 
made rafts for their horses, raised the floors of their 
work sheds, slept under the roofs of their cabins, 
and went on with their work. The timber for oars 
was cut from the branches of trees that were 
standing in the water. At the end of April the 
w^ater began to go down. The six boats Avere 
floated upon it into the river. They were open 
barges with seren oars to the side and sails of skin. 
As there vrere no decks, loose planks were laid down 
for the men to run upon to trim the sails. The drove 
of hogs that had folloT^'^ed them in all their wander- 
ings were butchered, and their meat salted for food, 
and the lard, mixed with resin, was used for tar for 
the outside of the boats. Some of the horses were 
killed and their meat parboiled, salted, and dried 
for food. • 

By the second of July, 1543, four years and two 
weeks since the}' set foot in the country, the Span- 
iards had completed their preparations for leaving 
it. There were about three hundred and fifty of 
them left. Waiting until after sunset to deceive the 
Indians, they quietly stepped into their boats, 
pushed off from the shore, and steered into the cur- 
rent. They rowed two nights and one day without 
stopping, passing over the spot where De Soto lay 



THE ESCAPE OF DE SOTO's FOLLOWERS. 57 

buried. The Indians pursued them furiously in 
canoes and harassed them from the banks. For 
seventeen days the rowing and fighting were kept up 
without ceasing, hardly a Spaniard in any of the 
boats escaping without a wound. One boat was cut 
off by the Indians, and its load of forty-eight brave 
Spaniards perished. 

At the end of the nineteenth day of their voyage, 
they came in sight of the Gulf. They rested upon 
one of the islands at the mouth of the river; and 
even here they were attacked by the Indians, and 
forced to fight for their lives. But it was their last 
fight with the ferocious natives. They got into their 
boats and passing the night at anchor in the mouth 
of the river, put out at daylight into the Gulf. 

And now came the last stage of their unfortu- 
nate expedition; sailing in their open boats along 
the coast of Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico, in search 
of the Iviver of Palms, the nearest Spanish settle- 
ment on the Mexican coast. Squall after squall 
struck them. At one time, the wind for five days 
kept them out of sight of land. For fifty-two 
days they made their slow way along. How many 
miles it was, they never knew ; for they could only 
keep count of the days; always creeping along by 
sail or oar, and coming into the land for 
water and rest when the wind permitted. If the 



58 STORIES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

place were good, the}^ stopped to fish; some drag- 
ging the net and casting the line, some wading 
along the shore for shell fish ; for they had nothing 
to eat but dry corn. As they were more often in 
the water than out of it, they wore no clothes but 
short skin breeches. 

With each dawn rose the hope of coming in sight 
of the River of Palms, but with each sunset the hope 
went down. At last, they began to fear that they 
had sailed past it in the night or been driven past 
it in a squall. On the fifty-third day, a furious 
storm came on that rose to frightful violence during 
the night. Two of the boats Avere driven out to sea, 
and the main mast of another went down in the 
blast. With daylight the storm grew even wilder. 
The Spaniards fought with it all day, as they had 
all night. Many a time the boats went under the 
waves, as the Spaniards thought, for good and all. 
Sunset came, and there was still no promise of bet- 
ter weather. The men had been for twenty-six 
hours without a Avink of sleep, a moment's rest, or 
a mouthful of food; standing half way up their 
legs in water, now pulling at the sails, now bailing- 
out the water which the waves poured over them. 
The sun was sinking and another night was low- 
ering over them, when suddenly, like a dim 
line of light on the right hand, a coast. 



THE ESCAPE OF DE SOTO's FOLLOWERS. 59 

appeared. The waves were running so high 
that most of the time one boat could not see the 
other, but whenever they rose in sight on the crest 
of a w^ave, shouts were sent across from the cap- 
tain's boat to steer for the white line and beach 
the boats. This was their only chance for life, so 
daring the tempest, still at its height, they headed 
their boats for the coast, and just as the sun went 
down, they drove hard upon it. At daylight they 
sent out two parties to explore the coast. One 
party returned with the good news that the land 
they were in was Mexico, a Spanish country. The 
men danced and laughed like mad men, and hugged 
and kissed one another in their joy. 

They made their way to the nearest town, and 
after resting there ten or twelve days, set out for 
the City of Mexico. They reached it in: the Autumn 
of 1543. Barefooted, half naked in their ragged 
garments, parched black by the wind and the sun, 
thin and weak, they looked more like beasts than 
men. This was the end of the great expedition that 
set sail with so much pomp from Spain for the con- 
quest of Florida. Less than one-third of the men 
lived to return. 



FEENCH EXPLOREES, 



The Pioneers. 



And now for a liimdred years, tlie Indians of 
Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi lived in their 
lands, free from the fear of the white man. For 
a hundred years, the Mississippi rolled its mighty 
currents through a wild and savage country, car- 
rying down its huge forest drift and casting it up 
like a wall or palissade, around its mouth in the 
gulf, so that in time the river became known as 
the Palissado Iviver. 

But during these same hundred years, the Eng- 
lish had settled the Atlantic coast from Florida 
to Maine, and the French had taken possession of 
Canada, and settled it from the mouth of the St. 
Lawrence lUver up to the great Lakes Ontario, 
Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior. And every 
year the French and English pioneers pushed far- 
ther and farther into new regions, raising their 
flags and taking possession of the land in the name 
of the king. 

Robert Cavelier de la Salle was the greatest of 



THE PIONEERS. 61 

French pioneers in America. He was the son of 
a rich merchant of Eouen, but at tAventy-three his 
bold and daring character led him across the ocean 
to seek his fortunes in the hardy life of the New 
World. A few miles above Montreal there can still 
be seen on the land that belonged to the young 
La Salle, the stone house in Avhich he lived. 
As the Indians had to pass by his settlement on 
their way to Montreal to trade, they got into the 
habit of stopping there, and from them La Salle 
first heard of a river called the Ohio, which was 
so long that it took eight or nine months to pad- 
dle in a canoe to its mouth in the sea. 

Now La Salle, and indeed all the men of his time, 
believed that China lay just beyond the western 
coast of America. When he heard of this wonder- 
ful river, he thought that it must run across 
America, and if so, it would be a short and quick 
way to China ; and if France owned this river, her 
ships could sail through it to China and make the 
trade of the vast continent of Asia her own. After 
he once began to think of it, he could think of noth- 
ing but the glory of discovering this river and tak- 
ing possession of it for his king. 

He sold his land and house, and having bought 
canoes and food and hired men and Indian guides, 
he started in search of the Ohio. He travelled 



()2 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HLSTOllY. 

down tlie St. Lawrence tlirougli Lake Ontario and 
into Ironde(iuoit Ba^^, wliere lie found some Seneca 
Indians, who knew the yvaj to the Ohio Kiver. His 
comi^anions, fearing the long route, and the hard- 
ships before them, deserted him here, but he Avent 
on alone, and for two years nothing was known 
of him in Canada, but a stray story told here and 
there by Indians, or fur traders, who had met him, 
or heard that he was pushing along through 
friendly and unfriendly Indians in search of the 
Ohio liiver. 

Marquette and Joliet. 

La Salle, however, was not the only Frenchman 
who had heard from Indians of the great river, nor 
the only one whose heart burned to go in searcJi 
of it. 

Far away, on the western end of Lake Superior, 
in a solitary little mission, lived in 1670 the young 
priest, Jacques Marquette, engaged in teaching the 
savages who gathered about him. He, also, had 
heard from a band of Illinois Indians about a great 
river they had crossed to come to the mission ; they 
said that it flowed hundreds of miles through the 
country and emptied no one knew Avhere, and th^i: 
upon its rich banks lived great tribes of Indians. 

Marquette could not, like La Salle, buy boats and 




FATHER MARQUETTE. 

From the Statue in the Capitol at Washington, D. C. 



64 STORIES FRo:\r lotttstana history. 

hire men and start at once in search of the river. 
He could only write what he heard to the Superior 
of his order and pray that before he died, God would 
grant him the favor of going there and bringing 
all its vast country into the fold of His church. 
But even while ^Marquette was thus praying, the 
savages about him broke into war, and, with his 
little flock of Christians, he had to flee away from 
Lake Superior and take refuge in a mission on the 
straits of Mackinaw. 

Fatlu^r Allouez, at tlie same time, was in 
charge of another mission at the head of 
Green Bay, in Lake Michigan, a favorite hunt- 
ing and fishing place of the Indians, who came 
there every year in great numbers; and he, also, 
heard of the Mississippi, as Father Marquette did ; 
and like Father Marquette, he also wrote of it to 
his Superior, and he, also, hoi3ed one day to preach 
his faith to the savage tribes living along its won- 
derful course. 

As La Salle had not come back from his search 
for the Ohio, and, indeed, as we have said, had 
hardly been heard from, the Governor of Canada 
decided to send out another explorer to search for 
the great river and to take possession of it for 
France. For he feared that the English, also, 
might hear of it and take possession of it for their 
king. 



MARQUETTE AND JOLIET. 65 

He chose Louis Joliet, a daring young fur trader, 
to carry out his plans, and Marquette to go with 
him. Joliet found Marquette in his mission at 
Mackinaw, and gave him the good news that his 
prayer was answered. 

They soon set out in two canoes with five men 
and a good supply of smoked beef and corn. They 
paddled through the straits of Mackinaw and into 
Lake Michigan, and were on their way to the Green 
Bay Mission, when they came to a Mttle river called 
the Menomonie, or Wild Rice River, where lived 
the Menomonie Indians. These told Marquette and 
Joliet that upon the banks of the Mississippi lived 
ferocious Indians, who put every stranger to death 
that came among them ; and that there was a demon 
on the river, whose roar could be heard for miles, 
who would suck them down into the whirlpool 
where he lived; that the waters of the river were 
full of monsters who would devour them; and be- 
sides all this, that the heat there was so great that it 
would surely kill them. Marquette and Joliet lis- 
tened to these tales, but they were not to be fright- 
ened. They paddled their canoes on through Green 
Bay until they came to the Mission, and from the 
Mission they followed a little river called Fox 
River, which brought them to Lake Winnebago. 
Crossing the Lake, they paddled into a river on 



66 



STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY, 



the other side, which brought them to a beautiful 
prairie, where they saw droves of elk and deer, 
and found a village of the Mascoutin and Miamie 




MAP OF MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 



MARQUETTE AND JOLIET. 67 

Indians, who gave them guides to the Wisconsin 
River. Like the Menomonies, these Indians tried 
to frighten them from their voyage, and when the 
Frenchmen paddled their canoes away just the 
same, all the Indians of the village stood upon the 
banks, gazing at them in wonderment, at men so 
brave as to go thus into such unknown and terrible 
regions. 

Marquette and Joliet followed the guides to the 
end of the little river they were in, and then car- 
ried their canoes a mile and a half over dry land, 
a "portage," as it was called, and got into the Wis- 
consin River, a clear, calm stream, which bore 
them through a beautiful country of forests ancT 
prairies. Day by day, they glided on through a 
peaceful solitude. At night, they would draw their 
canoes on to the bank, build a fire, cook their sup- 
per, smoke their pipes, and then go to sleep, with- 
out fear, under the sky gleaming with stars. 

About the middle of June, a month after they 
had started, they came to a river dashing with a 
mighty current across the Wisconsin. It was the 
great river they were in search of. They turned 
their canoes into it and were borne along, through 
the savage grandeur of its banks, into a region 
where they were the first white men to penetrate. 
They paddled along, looked with awe about them, 



68 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

expecting to meet the wonders that the Indians 
had foretold. A catfish bumped against their 
paddle one day; and another day they caught 
a curious and ugly spade fish in their net; 
but they saw no other monsters. And the 
only demon they met was a hideous figure painted 
on a rock in red, black and green, with red eyes, 
horns like a deer, whiskered mouth like a tiger's, a 
body covered with scales, and a great tail that 
twisted around it. 

They saw no Indians along the banks, only great 
herds of buffaloes. But now they did not sleep on 
shore. After they had cooked their supper, they 
would carefully put out the fire and sleep in their 
canoes, anchored out in the river, and would keep 
a man on watch all night. 

About the end of June, their keen eyes made out 
some foot-prints in the mud of the bank on their 
right. Marquette and Joliet followed the tracks, 
which led into a forest and across a prairie, 
where they could see an Indian village on the bank 
of a river and two or three other villages beyond. 
They crept, unseen, near enough to the first village 
to hear the Indians talking in their wigwams. Then 
they stood out in full view and shouted. In a flash 
the village was like an ant hill that had been trod- 
den upon, The Indians swarmed out and ran 



mahquette and jolie^. 6d 

about wildly. After a little four warriors were 
seen to be coming forward holding out a calumet 
or peace-pipe. Marquette and Joliet were thank- 
ful in their hearts to see that the Indians wore 
shirts of French cloth, which showed that they had 
traded with the French. Marquette asked them 
who they were. They answered, ''Illinois.'^ After 
smoking the pipe together, as was the Indian cus- 
tom, the warriors led the Frenchmen first to their 
own village, and then to one of the villages in the 
distance, which was the village of the great chief 
of all the Illinois. Here they were received with 
all the honors and ceremony that the Indians knew 
how to show. After smoking the peace-pipe with 
them the chief made a long speech of welcome, to 
which Marquette answered, telling the Indians that 
he was sent by God, whom they should knovv^ 
and obey, and that his chief was the great 
and powerful French King. A great feast 
followed. A wooden bowl of hominy boiled 
with grease was set before them, out of whicli 
a warrior fed Marquette and Joliet with a 
wooden spoon. Then came a great wooden platter 
of fish, which the same warrior fed to them with 
his fingers, after carefully taking out the bones and 
blowing on. the morsels to cool them. A large dog 
had been killed and roasted in their honor; but as 



70 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the Frenchmen did not seem to relish this dish, it 
was taken away and a dish of buffalo meat was 
brought on in its place. At night buffalo skins 
were spread on the ground for the guests to lie 
upon. 

When Marquette and Joliet left the village the 
next morning, the chief with six hundred of his 
people went out with them to the river and bade 
them good-bye. 

The canoes now passed the mouth of the Illinois 
River, and after that the Missouri, which poured 
into the beautiful clear water of the Mississippi 
a torrent of yellow mud and great logs and branches 
and uprooted trees. The light canoes pitched and 
rocked, and were almost wrecked in the furious cur- 
rent. They passed the site upon which has been 
built the great and stately city of St. Louis, and 
a few days later came to the Ohio or the ^'Beauti- 
ful Eiver," as the Indians well called it. 

Now the banks began to change; they became 
lower and flatter, and were covered in the low 
places with cane-brakes. Mosquitoes buzzed and 
bit, and the sun grew so hot that the white men 
had to shield themselves with awnings stretched 
over the canoes. 

One day, as they were paddling along without a 
thought of Indians, they suddenly came upon a 



MARQUETTE AND JOLIET. 71 

party of them on the bank of the river; and the 
Indians seemed much startled to see white men. 
Marquette at once held up the calumet given him 
by the Illinois. At sight of it, the Indians became 
friendly and made the Frenchmen land and eat of 
their food with them. 

After this, they went about three hundred miles, 
seeing no human beings but themselves, hearing 
nothing but the sound of their own voices and pad- 
dles. Then a turn in the river brought them before^ 
they knew it in front of a little village on the left 
bank. As soon as the Indians saw them, they broke 
into war whoops and seized their weapons. Some, 
jumping into canoes, paddled out into the river 
above and below the strangers; some rushed 
into the water with great clubs to attack them, 
and others stood on the bank and aimed their bows 
and arrows at them. Marquette all the time was 
standing up and holding out the calumet towards 
the Indians; but they took no notice of it. 
The Frenchmen gave themselves up for lost, 
when some old men of the village, hurrying 
after the young ones, came to the bank. 
They saw the calumet, and pointing it out 
to the hot-headed young warriors, quieted them. 
Then they called to the strangers to land. Mar- 
quette and Joliet with their men did so; but they 



72 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

could not but fear what would follow after so war- 
like a reception. The Indians, however, did them 
no harm ; on the contrary, after a friendly talk with 
them, they got ready a feast for them, and that 
night gave them a wigwam to sleep in. They be- 
longed to the Arkansas tribe. Their greatest village, 
they said, was tw^enty-five miles below, opposite 
the mouth of the Arkansas River. 

The next day, on their way to this village, Mar- 
quette and Joliet met a warrior from it, standing 
in his canoe in the river and holding out a calumet 
to them. The Indians from the village above had 
sent word ahead of the coming of the strangers. 

The warrior guided them to his village, and led 
them to a sort of cypress shed before the cabin of 
the chief. The ground was covered with cane mats. 
On these the Frenchmen sat, -while around them 
sat the warriors, and behind the warriors stood 
all the rest of the people of the village, gazing 
eagerly at the strangers. Long speeches were made 
by the Indians and by the white men, and during 
the speeches food was brought : great dishes of hom- 
iny, boiled corn, and roasted dog. When Marquette 
asked the Indians about the river below their vil- 
lage, he was told that the Indians down there were 
armed with guns, which they had got from white 
men, and that they were so fierce that the Arkansas 



MARQUETTE AND JOLIET. 73 

Indians did not dare to fish or hunt about there. 

Marquette and Joliet had now gone far enough 
to know that the Mississippi flowed south and into 
the Gulf of Mexico. They feared that if they tried to 
get to its mouth, they might be killed on the way by 
the Indians, or perhaps captured after they got 
there by the Spaniards, and thus lose the good of 
their expedition. And, as it was the middle of July, 
and they had already been two months on the voy- 
age, they decided to return to Canada and report 
what they had done. They therefore turned their 
canoes homeward, but found it a long and toilsome 
task, paddling their boats now up stream against 
the Mississippi current, under the heat of a mid- 
summer sun. Marquette fell ill and almost died. 
When the party reached the Illinois, they turned 
into it, and went through a country that gladdened 
their eyes with its fine forests and broad plains. 
They came to the great village of the Illinois, named 
Kaskaskia, where Marquette, later, was to meet 
with the fulfilment of his prayers. The chief and 
some warriors guided them to Lake Michigan. 

When they reached Green Bay, Marquette was 
too weak to go further, so Joliet went on alone to 
make report to the Governor of Canada of the 
great exploration they had made. Marquette, still 
ill and weak, spent that winter and the next sum- 



74 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

mer at Green Bay. In the autumn, he thought he 
was strong enough to carry out th-e wish 
of his heart, which was to found a mission 
at Kaskaskia among the Illinois. He set 
out in a canoe with two men. But his 
disease returned, and he was forced to spend 
the winter in the forests of Michigan. When 
March came, he made another start, and reached 
Kaskaskia, where the Indians received him as if he 
were, indeed, a messenger from Heaven. He went 
from wigwam to wigwam, bearing his holy message 
and baptizing the children. The Indians begged 
him always to stay with them and teach them, but 
he felt that his life was nearing its end, and he 
had to hasten away. . He left the village a few 
days after Easter, the Indians following him in a 
large crowd, as far as Lake Michigan. He lay pale 
and weak in the canoe, which his faithful men pad- 
dled along as fast as they-^could, hoping to get to 
the mission in Mackinaw in time to save his life. 
But on the nineteenth of May, 1675, telling them 
that his hour was come, he begged them to land 
that he might die. According to his request, he was- 
buried on the shore of the lake. 



LA SALLE. 



His Vast Plan. 

La Salle came back from his exploration of the 
Ohio, filled with a vast plan. He had not been able 
to reach the Mississippi, but, like Marquette, he 
had found that it flowed not west into the Pacific 
Ocean, as he once thought, but south into the Gulf 
of Mexico. And he had learned, by having crossed 
them himself, the different rivers that flowed into 
the Mississippi. 

The English, as we have said, were settled along 
the eastern coast of tlie continent, in the strip of 
land that lies between the Atlantic coast and the 
Alleghany Mountains. The Spaniards held Mexico 
and what is now California. The great rich Mis- 
sissippi valley, all the middle land of the continent, 
lying between the Alleghany and the Rocky Moun- 
tains, was yet unsettled by the white man, and lay 
open to the first power that should take posses- 
sion of it and hold it. La Salle determined that 
this power should be France. 

His plan was to build forts along the Great 



76 



STORIES FROM LOUISIANA fitSTORt. 



Lakes, which feed the streams that flow into 
the Mississippi, to build forts where these 
streams join the Mississippi, and lastly to build a 




LA SALLE. 

great fort at the mouth of the Mississippi, upon 
the Gulf of Mexico. In each fort a garrison of 
French soldiers was to be kept, and around it the 
Indians were to be settled; and so there would be 
all along the Mississippi from Canada to Mexico 
a line of French and Indian towns. 



HIS VAST PLAN. 77 

It was a vast project and required a vast mind 
to carry it out, but La Salle had such a mind. He 
was, as we have said, the greatest pioneer France 
ever had in this country. For ten years he worked 
at it, with all his strength of head and heart. He 
went to France, and there gained the authority 
and consent of the king for the undertaking, and 
borrowed what money he wanted, promising to pay 
it back from the profits he counted upon making 
out of the furs traded from the Indians. But the 
greatest gain he made in France was Henri de 
Tonty, a young Italian officer, who made in America 
a reputation for courage, loyalty and unselfishness, 
that still endears him to the hearts of readers and 
lovers of history. He had lost a hand in the wars 
and had replaced it by an iron hand, which he al- 
ways covered with a glove. In America, in disputes 
with the Indians, Tonty would use this hand to 
knock them over, and so became known by 
them as the "Iron Hand." He returned to Can- 
ada with La Salle, who brought over, also, 
a number of other men for the expedition. 
But there never has been a great man with 
a great plan who has not had to fight his 
way against ill-will and jealousy. There were mer- 
chants in Montreal who feared that La Salle was 
going to take away from them their fur trade, and 



78 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the furtraders feared that he would get their trade 
from the Indians, and, therefore, they did what they 
could to excite enmity against the new expedition, 
and to turn his own men against La Salle, and even 
to rouse the Indians against him. But despite his 
enemies and all the trouble and vexation they 
caused him. La Salle, by 1678, had raised his first 
fort. Fort Frontenac, on the Niagara River, and 
had built a large boat, the "Griffin," to carry his 
men, provisions, arms, and implements across the 
Great Lakes, and bring back the furs which he 
expected to get from the Indians. 

La Salle in the Great Lakes. 

In the month of August, 1679, he set sail in the 
"Griffin," and passing safely through Lake Erie and 
Lake Huron, he landed at the French mission in 
the Straits of Mackinaw, where he expected to meet 
some of his men with furs, for he had sent men 
ahead to buy furs and have them ready waiting for 
him at different points. But he found that some had 
deserted, stealing his furs ; others had sold them and 
spent the money in Mackinaw. He arrested those 
he could find in Mackinaw and sent Tonty after 
the deserters. He then sailed on his way to Lake 
Michigan, and cast anchor at one of the islands in 
the mouth of Green Bay, which belonged to the 



LA SALLE IN THE GREAT LAKES. 79 

tribe of Pottawatamies. Here he found the friendly 
chief of the tribe and some of his men, with so 
rich a lot of furs that he decided to send the Grifl&n 
at once back with them to his creditors in Canada. 
Hie charged the captain to make all speed and 
return as quickly as he could to the head of Lake 
Michigan, Avhere he would find the expedition wait- 
ing for him. La Salle then set out in canoes to go 
around the shores of Lake Michigan to its head. The 
canoes were so heavily laden that they could get 
along only very slowly. And hardly had they left 
the island of the Pottawatamies, Avhen a great 
storm arose that came near sending them all to the 
bottom of the lake. But they managed to reach 
land, where they had to wait six days before the 
lake was smooth enough for them to put out again. 
And they had barely gone a day's journey when 
again the wind arose and drove them ashore; and 
this time a snow storm stopped them two days. 
Then storm after storm belated them, until their 
food gave out. One day they paddled thirty miles 
without eating, when a gale came on, and as they 
were off a high rocky shore, the only way they 
could save their canoes was to jump into the water, 
and lifting them up, load and all, to carry them 
through the waves that broke over their heads, and 
-to climb the heights with them — the heights which 
now bear the beautiful city of Milwaukee, 



80 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

October came on and the autumnal winds 
kept the lake so rough that every night the 
Frenchmen had to climb the rocky coast with their 
canoes on their shoulders, and carry them down 
the next morning, and launch them again. But 
they soon began to find game in plenty and wild 
grapes loading the tops of the forest trees. La 
Salle was getting some of these one day, when he 
saw some fresh footprints in the ground. He re- 
turned at once to his camp, and charged his men to 
be on their guard against Indians. They obeyed him 
for a while, but catching sight of a bear, they could 
not keep from firing at it, and so made their camp 
known to a roving party of Indians, who were 
near by. 

La Salle blamed his men for their carelessness, 
and placed a guard over the canoes that night. But 
as it was raining heavily, the guard grew careless, 
and the wily Indians, creeping flat on the ground 
under cover of the rain to the farthest canoe, stole 
almost everything in it; the Indian nearest the 
canoe handing what he took to the one behind him, 
who passed it on to the next, and so on till the 
plunder reached the last Indian. 

La Salle, who had waked, saw something moving. 
He roused his men and kept them on guard until 
daylight. Then, finding out that he had been 



ILLINOIS RIVER AND INDIANS. 81 

plundered, he went after the Indians and fright- 
ened them into returning what they had stolen; 
after which they had a great feast, all together. 
From them La Salle heard what to him was a very 
bad piece of news ; that war had broken out between 
the Iroquois and the Illinois, through whose coun- 
try he had to pass. 

The Iroquois, the fiercest and strongest tribe of 
the Northern Indians, had been, in the past, the 
most cruel foes of the French in Canada, and had 
reddened the soil of the French settlements with 
the blood of men, women, and children. But at 
last they had buried the hatchet, that is, made 
peace with the French. What La Salle feared was 
that the Illinois would make war against his party 
as friends of the Iroquois. 

The Illinois River and the Illinois Indians. 

When he reached the end of Lake Michigan, at the 
mouth of the little river St. Joseph, where he ex- 
pected to meet Tonty and the "Griffin,'' neither the 
boat nor Tonty was there, nor any sign of them. 
While he waited for them, he put his men to work 
to cut timber and build a fort. They had it nearly 
finished before Tonty came. As for the "Grififiji," 
Tonty reported that she had not put into Macki- 
naw, nor could any news be heard of her by the men 



82 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

he had sent out in her search. La Salle was 
sorely troubled at this, but anxious as he was for 
news of his missing boat, he dared not wait any- 
longer where he was ; for the winter was coming on 
fast and he feared the streams would freeze over 
and so block his way. He started, therefore, with 
what he had: thirty men and eight canoes; and 
followed the little river St. Joseph to its end. Then, 
carrying their canoes over land five miles, they 
floated them on the Kankakee, one of the heads of 
the Illinois River. It was but a small rill hardly 
large enough for a canoe to pass in it. But it grew 
broader and deeper as it carried them along. Great 
swamps and trembling prairies lay on each side as 
far as the eye could reach. They could see bones 
of the buffalo in all directions, but ithe Indians had 
already hunted over the plains and burnt the grass. 
For when they see a heard of buffalo, they fire the 
grass in a great circle all around, leaving only one 
passage. Here they post themselves with their 
bows and arrows, and as the flames drive the buf- 
falo through the passage, they shoot as many as 
they want. The only buffalo the Frenchmen got 
was one they found stuck fast in the mire, and the 
only other game, one deer and some wild geese. 

By the end of December, the party reached a 
large Illinois village on the right hand of the river. 



ILLINOIS RIVER AND INDIANS. 83 

it held four hundred and sixty cabins; long and 
rounded on the top and covered with double layers 
of rush mats, so closely woven that they kept out 
wind, rain, and snow perfectly. They looked, the 
Frenchmen said, like great cradles stuck in the 
ground. Each cabin was large enough to hold five 
or more families around its own fire place. The 
village, however, was deserted, all the Indians 
being away on their winter hunt. 

This troubled La Salle, for he was out of food, 
and although he had found where the Indians had 
hidden their corn underground, he was afraid to 
take any, as he knew there was no surer way than 
this of offending them. But he could not go on any 
further without food, for the firing of the prairies 
had driven away the game. So he did take some 
of the corn, hoping that when he met the Indians, 
he could make the act good to them. A few days 
later, towards evening, he saw smoke rising in the 
air from an Indian camp, down the river. And the 
next morning he came in view of a great number 
of pirogues in the river ahead of him ; and on both 
banks, a village filled with Indians. As he had 
been warned against the Illinois, he prepared him- 
self to meet them. _He ranged his eight canoes side 
by side, and as they came down the current in a 
line across the river, each man held his gun to his 



84 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

shoulder. The old men, women, and children in 
the village took to the nearest woods as fast as 
they could go. The warriors ran for their 
weapons; but before they could do anything, La 
Salle's canoes were at their landing, and La Salle 
had jumped ashore. He could easily have gotten 
the better of the Indians in the panic they were in ; 
but instead, he halted his men and waited for the 
Indians to quiet down. The warriors on the other 
side of the river, seeing this, came forward at 
once with the calumet, and they all smoked the 
pipe of peace together. The savages, as joyful now 
as they were terrified before, passed the rest of 
day in eating, dancing, and frolicking with their 
new friends. La Salle then called the head war- 
riors of the tribe around him, and after making 
them a present of some tobacco and hatchets, told 
them how he had been forced to take corn from 
their village above. He said he would pay them 
for it in things that they needed ; but if they wished 
to take the corn back, they could do so; and then 
he would go to their neighbors, the Osages, w^ho 
would gladly trade him corn for presents. He told 
them, besides, that he meant to make a settlement 
in their country, and build a great boat there and 
go down in it to the end of the great river. As for 
the Iroquois, he said, they were now sons of the 



ILLINOIS UIVBR AND INDIANS, 85 

King of France and brothers of the Frenchmen. 
He therefore advised the Illinois to make peace 
with them and offered to help them to do it. But, 
he added, that if the Illinois allowed him to build a 
fort in their land, he would help them against the 
Iroquois, should these bring war into their country. 
The Illinois gladly took the presents as pay for the 
corn, and agreed to all that La Salle said. In their 
speeches they told him about the wonderful length 
and beauty of the Mississippi, and how boats could 
easily go down all the way to the mouth. 

But the next day an Indian came secretly to the 
village and told the Illinois that La Salle had come 
there to arm their enemies against them, and that 
he was a friend of the Iroquois; that he already 
had a fort in their country, and that he gave them 
arms and powder. The following day, therefore, 
when the Frenchmen and Indians were eating to- 
gether, one of the Illinois chiefs arose and told 
La Salle that he wished to cure him of the sickness 
he had of wishing to go down the great river ; that 
no one had ever gone down there and come back 
alive; that the banks were filled with a multitude 
of savages, barbarous people who could crush the 
Frenchmen no matter how well armed they were; 
that the waters of the river were filled with mon- 
sters and serpents; and even if in their big boats 



86 STORIES FllOM LOUISIANA HISTORY, 

the Frenchmen could pass through all these dan- 
gers, the river, at its lower end, went over great 
falls and precipices, and ended by plunging into a 
bottomless gulf in the earth. The chief's manner 
was so serious, and he showed so much interest in 
the French, that La Salle's men hearing him, and 
not knowing of the secret visit of the strange 
Indian, believed him and became very much fright- 
ened. La Salle, who had heard of the visit, knew 
that the warrior was sent by enemies, and that 
he had brought presents to the Illinois to turn them 
against him. But he could not make his men be- 
lieve this, and that" night six of them deserted, 
choosing rather to risk the danger from Indians 
and famine on the way back to Canada, than the 
dreadful things that the warrior said lay before 
them on the river. 

La Salle did what he could to prevent the others 
from following so bad an example. He promised 
that if any among them wanted to return to Can- 
ada, he would give them a boat to do so in the 
spring. He asked them only to stay through the win- 
ter, and repeated over and over again to them that 
he wanted no man to go with him against his will. 
But he made up his mind to withdraw his men 
from the Indian village, where it was so easy for 
them to be turned against the expedition. He 



THE LOSS OF THE "GIUFFIN/^ 87 

went down the river some miles below the village, 
where he built a fort that he called '^Creve-Coeur/^ 
or ^'Break Heart." But he should have called it 
^^Great Heart" instead, for although, as we shall see, 
he suffered trials enough to break the heart of al- 
most any man, he never gave up courage, but on the 
contrary, pushed on more bravely after each disap- 
pointment. Within the new fort the Frenchmen 
were safe from the Indians; but they suffered for 
food and for news of the ^^Grifl&n." The men whom 
La Salle had sent back to search for the vessel, had 
never returned. The timber Avas cut and sawed 
for the new boat, but there was no chance of finish- 
ing it without the fastenings, the cordage, sails, 
and anchors that were in the ''Griffin." In fact, 
there was no hope of going any further in the ex- 
pedition, unless with the other supplies in the 
"Griffin" came food, arms, and ammunition. 

The Loss of The ^^Griffin.^^ 

Fearing that while he was waiting for the vessel, 
the time would slip by and he would be kept an- 
other winter where he was. La Salle made up his 
mind to go himself to Canada, and find out the 
truth about the ''Griffin," and if she were lost to 
raise money and get the other supplies and men and 
bring them back with him to Fort Creve-Coeur, It 



8S STORIES FROM LUL ISIANA HISTORY. 

seemed a desperate undertaking and one above the 
courage and strength of any man, for it was a 
journey of more than a thousand miles over a 
strange country, filled with hostile Indians. He 
set out with four Frenchmen and a faithful Mohe- 
gan Indian, who never left him. Each man carried 
his gun, powder, balls, a hatchet, an iron pot, a 
blanket, a change of clothing, and dressed leather 
to make new moccasins. For, like the Indians, the 
Frenchmen wore moccasins, not shoes, and used 
up a pair in a hard day's tramp. It was the first of 
March, and the ice was just beginning to melt. For 
a few miles they could paddle their canoes up the 
center of the river, where the current kept a pas- 
sage free from ice. But when the river spread out 
into Lake Peoria, they found it frozen hard and 
covered with snow. They made sleds, put their 
canoes on them, and dragged them over to the other 
end of the lake. But the river there was 
covered with ice, too thin to walk on, and too thick 
to paddle through, so they had to carry their canoes 
along the bank through the woods, walking in snow 
that came half way up their waists. That night 
a heavy rain fell, which melted the ice, and 
the next morning they found they could travel by 
the river ; but seven or eight times during the day, 
they had to cut a passage through the ice with 



89 



their hatchets. Before evening the ice was so thick 
that they were forced to carry or drag their canoes 
over the frozen ground or marsh until they came 
to running water again. 

At the end of the ninth day, they found the snow 
so firm that they made snow shoes, and gliding 
swiftly over the surface, pulling their boats be- 
hind them, they made from twenty to thirty miles a 
day. This brought them to the great Illinois vil- 
lage, where they were kept two days by a heavy fall 
of rain. The village was still deserted and empty. 
La Salle had hoped to find corn here to send back 
to his hungry men at Fort Creve-Coeur; but there 
was none. As far as he could see, the country 
around was white, frozen, desolate. The rain had 
loosened the ice in the river above ; and in the still, 
clear air the sound of its bursting and cracking 
echoed like cannon shots, followed by grinding and 
crunching, as the huge blocks piled up one upon 
the other along the bank or against the islands in 
the river. La Salle knew that the Indians would 
not return to their village in such a season as this, 
but he made a fire of some dried rushes and grass, 
in hopes that the smoke might catch the eye of some 
roaming hunter. A buffalo was caught struggling 
in the snow. The Frenchmen killed it. While they 
were smoking its meat. La Salle, walking arounci 



90 STORIES FUOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

outside the village, came upon three warriors. One 
of them was Chassagoac, a noted Illinois chief, 
who was also a great friend of the French. La 
Salle brought him into the village and gave him a 
present of some hatchets, knives, a red blanket, and 
an iron pot. He then told him of the great need of 
food at Fort Creve-Coeur, and asked him to send 
some thither. Chassagoac promised to do this, and 
also to be the friend of the Frenchmen left at the 
fort. 

Eased in his mind, La Salle and his men left the 
village and worked their waj^ along as before, pad- 
dling when they could, cutting their way through 
the ice, carrying their boats around bad places. 
They came at last to a point where the river was 
completely closed by the ice; so hiding their canoes 
on an island and taking their packs on their backs, 
they set out on foot to cross the country that lay 
between them and the southern end of Lake Mich- 
igan. For two days they walked across the prairie 
through the ice and snow, and came to swamps and 
lowlands, where they waded in water up to their 
knees, until they were stopped by a swift river, 
which they crossed on a raft. The next day, after 
crossing three more streams in the same way, they 
came in the evening to Lake Michigan, and the 
morning after they were at their fort on the little 



THE LOSS OP THE "GUIFFIN/'' 91 

river St. Joseph. La Salle found here the two men 
sent in search of the "Griffin." They had no good 
tidings of the missing vessel for him. They had 
gone all around the lake, but had found no sign of 
her or of her cargo. La Salle ordered the men to go 
on to Fort Creve-Coeur and join Tonty, while he 
and his party pursued their way across the country 
to Lake Erie. 

For two days they pushed their way through a 
forest so thick with thorns and brambles that their 
clothes were torn in tatters, and their faces became 
so scratched and bloody that they hardly knew one 
another. But after this they came into the open 
woods, where they found plenty of game, and so 
had not to suffer for food as before, when often 
they would walk from dawn to night without eat- 
ing. Their gun shots, how^ever, were heard by 
Indians, who started out at once in pursuit of them. 
One party surrounded them, and would surely have 
put an end to them, had not the white men quickly 
jumped behind trees, and pointed their guns. The 
Indians, not seeing their faces, took them for 
Iroquois, of w^hom they were afraid, and so made 
off again, giving the alarm on^ all sides that the 
Iroquois were in the country. Thus, for days, the 
Frenchmen were let alone. To hide their tracks 
from the Indians, they burnt the grass behind them 



92 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

as they went over the prairie. But they came to a 
swamp which they had to cross in mud and water 
up to their waists; and their footprints here were 
found by a band of Indians, who followed them for 
three days. They did not dare make a fire at night, 
and so they could dry their wet clothes only by 
spreading them out while they slept, wrapped in 
their blankets. One morning they found their 
clothes frozen so stiff that they could not put them 
on, and had to make a fire to thaw them. The 
Indians, who were camping not far away, seeing the 
smoke, ran up at once with loud cries; but fortu- 
nately a deep little river was running between them 
and the Frenchmen, and this and the sight of the 
Frenchmen's guns stopped them. In the first week 
of April, two of the men fell sick and were not able 
to walk any longer. La Salle was forced to make a 
canoe and carry them on by a little stream he found 
that flowed into Lake Erie. As there were no birch 
trees there, he had an elm cut down and the bark 
taken off whole by pouring boiling water upon it. 
With this bark they made a canoe, and all getting 
into it paddled along as far as they could, which 
was not very far; for great trees, brought down by 
the high water or fallen in from the banks, blocked 
their passage and they were continually forced to 
get out and carry their canoe around ; and besides 
the river was so crooked that in five days they had 



BAD NEWS PROM TOXTY. 93 

hot gone as far as one day's walking in a straight 
line would have taken them. So, as the sick men 
were now better, they gave up their canoe, and a 
few days afterwards reached the Straits of Detroit, 
through which the waters of Lake Huron pass into 
Lake Erie. La Salle sent two of his men from 
here to Mackinaw to find out if there had not yet 
come some news of the ^'Griffin,'' while he and the 
two other Frenchmen and the Indian crossed the 
strait on a raft and pushed on afoot around Lake 
Erie. They found the woods overflowed with the 
melting of the snow and ice, and after a few days 
of wading through this, one of the Frenchmen and 
the Indian fell very ill, and La Salle and his one 
well man made a canoe and carried them in it the 
rest of the journey. They reached Niagara the 
last week of April. La Salle found some of his 
men here, and from them heard that not only the 
^'Griffin" and all of her cargo were lost, but that a 
vessel sent to him from France, loaded with goods, 
had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. 
As far as loss of money could make him so, he was 
a ruined man. 

Bad News From Tonty. 

It was not loss of money, however, that could ruin 
La Salle. This misfortune only acted like fuel to 
brighten the flame of his courage. He hurried at 



94 STOKIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

ouce on to Fort Frontenac and from there to Mon- 
treal. As his men were broken down, he hired 
three fresh ones to go on with him. In one week 
he finished his business in Montreal and came back 
to Fort Frontenac, ready to start on the return to 
Fort Creve-Coeur, when there came to him mes- 
sengers from Tonty with the worst news received 
yet; which was that nearly all his men had deserted 
from Fort Creve-Coeur, after plundering his store- 
house and destroying and throwing into the river 
all the goods, arms, ammunition, and stores they 
could not carry off. Tonty and the few who had 
remained faithful to him had taken refuge in the 
Illinois village. Tonty's messengers were followed 
by two men, who told La Salle that the deserters 
had also destroyed the fort at St. Joseph, had stolen 
the furs belonging to La Salle at Mackinaw, and 
had plundered his store-house at Niagara. Some 
of them had gone to New York, but the rest, in three 
canoes, were then on their way to Fort Frontenac, 
to kill La Salle himself, so that he could not punish 
them. 

La Salle at once took his measures to arrest the 
villains and to recover what he could of his stolen 
property. Leaving a boat and five men at Fort 
Frontenac, he set out in a canoe with five other 
men, and paddling all night came, at daylight, to 



BAD NEWS FROM TONTY. 95 

a point that the deserters had to pass. Their first 
and second canoes were surprised, captured, and 
sent on to Fort Frontenac, where the men were cast 
into prison. The third canoe was not seen until 
the next day. As it would not stop when hailed. 
La Salle's men fired into it, and killed two men. 
The rest gave themselves up and were sent to join 
their comrades in prison. 

And now, after engaging new men, soldiers, 
masons, ship carpenters, blacksmiths, and laborers, 
and buying a fresh supply of food and goods as well 
as what Avas needed to finish and rig the vessel be- 
gun at Fort Creve-Coeur, La Salle made all haste 
to get back to Tonty in the Illinois country 

He set , out in August ; but when he reached 
Mackinaw, where he expected to buy corn and meet 
some of his men, he found the Indians there in an 
ugly temper and slow about selling food to him, 
and the men he had engaged did not come on time. 
He left a lieutenant to bring them and the food on, 
while he and twelve men hastened on to Fort St. 
Joseph. He found it in ruins. Leaving there his 
heavy luggage and five men to wait until the rest of 
the party came, he with six men and the Mohegan 
set out to get as quickly as they could to Tonty in 
the great Illinois village. 

As before, they followed the St. Joseph River 



96 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

and carrying their boats over to the Kankakee, 
paddled down this river to the Illinois. The prairies 
had not been burned, and they killed plenty of 
buffalo, deer and other game, and loaded a canoe 
with the best portions to take to Tonty. But when 
they came in sight of the village, they saw only the 
charred poles of the cabins standing; all else was 
cinders and ashes. The Iroquois had passed over it, 
and well did the Frenchmen know their bloody 
work. On the upright poles of the cabins were 
stuck the heads of the unfortunate Illinois. Heaps 
of ashes showed where a number had been burned 
at the stake. Wolves and buzzards were feasting 
on the bodies of the dead. The corn fields had been 
destroyed; the storehouses broken open, and the 
food carried off. Even the graveyard of the Illinois 
had suffered the savage vengeance of the Iroquois. 
The graves had been broken open, and the bones of 
the dead Illinois thrown out; the greatest insult 
the Indians could inflict upon one another. 

La Salle and his men, with hearts heavy with 
grief and fear, looked at each head to see if it 
might be that of a Frenchman ; but all had the hair 
of Indians. They looked at the bodies; all were 
Indians. They searched, but found no marks of gun 
shots or any sign that the Frenchmen had been 
made prisoners. 



HAD NEWS FROM TONTY. 97 

But in a garden of the Illinois, about a mile and 
a half below, on the bank of the river, they 
found set in the ground six stakes painted red, and 
upon each stake, drawn in black, the figure of a man 
with blindfolded eyes. As it is the custom of the 
Indians to paint such stakes when they have killed 
their enemies, or made them prisoners. La Salle 
thought that this meant that the Iroquois had 
found the six Frenchmen and had killed them or 
made them prisoners. There was no sleep for him 
that night, but in its stead, grief, pain, and cruel 
anxiety, and trying to decide what was best for 
him to do. 

By morning he had made up his mind to push 
down the river after the fleeing Illinois, in hopes of 
finding that they had carried Tonty and his men 
with them as prisoners. He took four men Avith 
hihi and left tAvo.men hidden in an island near the 
village, on watch for the rest of the party, who 
might come in his absence. He ordered them to 
cover their fire at night, make no smoke by day, 
and not to fire their guns. He and his men each 
carried two guns, a pistol, a sword, powder and 
lead, and some hatchets and knives for gifts to the 
Indians. About fifteen miles below the village they 
came to an island where the fleeing Illinois had 
camped with their wives and children. Just op- 



98 STOIUES FKO.Al LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

posite, on the river bank, was the camp of the pur- 
suing Iroquois; but in neither could be found any 
trace of the Frenchmen. As he went down the river 
La Salle passed seven camps of the Illinois and 
on the other side of the river as many of thfe 
Iroquois, but in none of them was there any sign of 
the Frenchmen. 

He came to the ruined and deserted Fort Creve- 
Coeur, and passed on, following the route of the 
fleeing Illinois and the pursuing Iroquois, stopping 
only to examine their camps alwa^'S just opposite 
one another on the river bank. At last, by the fresh 
state of the ash heaps. La Salle saw that the In- 
dians could not be much ahead of him, and he 
paddled all night to gain on them the more quickly. 
The next day he saw in a meadow on the right bank 
of the river some straight, still, human figures. He 
and his men landed, but when they came near they 
saw that the figures were the half burned bodies of 
Indian women, tied to stakes, and all around the 
bloodj^ signs of savage victory. But still no trace of 
the Frenchmen! La Salle still paddled on down 
the river and came to where it poured into the 
Mississippi. How he had schemed and planned 
to reach the Mississippi! How he had looked for- 
ward to leading the expedition into it! And here 
he was, in a single canoe and but four men with 



BAD NKws fro:,! toxty. 99 

him, in sight of it, and on the thrcshohl of the great 
country that it was to be his glory to affix to the 
crown of France. His men begged him to go on. 
They offered their lives, if necessary, to finish the 
discovery. But until he knew what Tonty's fate was, 
there could be no further discovery for La Salle. 
He turned his canoe up the river, and the men used 
their paddles with such a will that in four days they 
did two hundred and fifty miles, and reached 
the Illinois village. The two men left here were 
taken up, and the party pushed on, now with their 
boats in sleds, now breaking a way through the ice 
with their paddles, as far as the canoe could go, and 
then on foot through soft snow,fWaist deep. La Salle 
was always in the lead; and he, who never seemed 
to mind cold and fatigue, who had made such a bit- 
ter journey the year before, even he said that he 
had never yet felt such cold or suffered such hard- 
ships. The only consolation in it was finding, in 
a camp cabin, a bit of sawed wood, and some other 
traces of Frenchmen, which made him hope that 
Tonty and his party might have passed along that 
way. 

At the end of January, La Salle reached the Fort 
of St. Joseph, where he found his men waiting for 
him. He spent the rest of the winter there, and 
turned his time to good account by making friends 



100 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTOUY. 

of the Indian tribes around liini, and winning peace 
from them for his friends, the Illinois. 

In the month of May, he set out for Canada. At 
Mackinaw, he found, to his great joy, Tonty, who, 
with his men, had had the good fortune to get out 
of the village of the Illinois before the Iroquois 
fell upon it; and so, while La Salle was looking 
for him, he was on his way to Mackinaw. 

The Naming of Louisiana. 

For the third time La Salle fitted out his expedi- 
tion, but he had learned from two failures the les- 
son of success. This time he led his men himself, 
all in one body; and instead of taking along the 
heavy loads of materials, and the carpenters and 
blacksmiths for boat building, he took only the 
necessar}^ food, arms, ammunition, and the goods 
to trade with the Indians. His canoes made the 
long voyage from Fort Frontenac through the lakes 
safely, and arrived at Fort St. Joseph at the end 
of the Autumn of 1681. By the last week of Decem- 
ber, all was in readiness for the start for the Mis- 
sissippi. 

There were fift^^-four in the party; twenty-three 
white men, eighteen Indians ; ten squaws and three 
children; for some of the warriors would not go 
without their squaws, and children. The gallant 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. 101 

and lojal Tonty and Father Zenobe Membre, the 
priest who had gone on the other expedition, were 
the most noted among the white men. Among the 
Indians was the faithful Mohegan, who had fol- 
lowed La Salle in all his wanderings. 

The country lay in all the beauty of a Northern 
Christmas tide. The prairies were a dazzling white 
expanse of frozen snow. The leafless trees of the 
forest shone like silver under the calm blue sky. 
The streams were still and silent, frozen from bank 
to bank. 

Over prairies, through forests, and down the solid 
roadway of the Illinois river, they went, dragging 
their canoes on sledges behind them. They passed 
by the Illinois villages, now Illinois graveyards. 
The}^ glided over Lake Peoria and into the river 
again, and went onward until the ice grew thin, and 
they were able to launch their canoes and use their 
paddles. The river led them past the Illinois and 
Iroquois camps of the year before, into the Missis- 
sippi, and La Salle reached the point on the bank 
of the river where, with so heavy a heart, he had 
turned back from his desperate search for Tonty. 
Smoothly and pleasantly the voyagers went on into 
the new and strange country before them. The 
Indians hunted along the bank and kept them sup- 
plied with game. Fish could be had at any time by 



102 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Tasting a line into the river ; and one time a catfish 
was caught so large that it fed all the white men 
for supper. 

Early in the afternoons, the canoes were paddled 
to the bank at some convenient place for the camp ; 
when all quickly got ashore and went briskly to 
work; the men gathering wood; the squaws lighting 
the fires and putting the kettles to boil, while the 
children played around. Soon the good smell of 
supper rose in the air. Then came the hearty, 
cheery meal, and then all lay down under the starrs 
or in the moonlight to sleep. 

A few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, 
the expedition passed a large Tamaroas village of 
one hundred and eighty cabins. Three days later, 
they paddled by the beautiful Ohio, flowing in from 
the left. 

As they advanced, the aspect of the country be- 
gan to change. The wild and rugged north- 
ern scenery seemed to soften and grow gen- 
tle. The high rocks and wooded cliffs be- 
came more and more level. Then came stretches of 
swamp, and again the bank would rise into bluffs. 
At what we know as the Chickasaw Bluffs they had 
an adventure. AYliile camping here, some of the men 
went off to hunt. Pierre Prudhomme, who had 
never gone on a hunt before, went with them. La 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. 103 

Salle charged him not to get lost; but told him if he 
should, to guide himself by the compass and keep 
to the North, and he would be sure to get back to 
the camp. 

That evening, when the hunters returned, Prud- 
honime was not with them. As a great many Indian 
tracks had been seen. La Salle was afraid that he 
had been captured or killed, and the whole camp 
was excited and troubled over it. The next day the 
hunters went out to search for him, but only found 
a cabin in the woods, which the Indians had just 
left. La Salle sent out a party of his men, red 
and white, to track these Indians, and capture 
some of them, in hopes that they could tell him 
something about Prudhomme; and in the mean- 
time, he raised a stockade around his camp, in case 
of trouble with the Indians. Two warriors were 
caught, and brought to La Salle. They said they 
were Chickasaws, and that their village was a few 
days' journey away. La Salle sent men to the vil- 
lage to see if Prudhomme was there, and to get him 
back. But Prudhomme was not there. After eight 
days spent in hunting for him. La Salle sadly de- 
cided to go on without him, giving his little fort 
the name of Prudhomme, in memory of him. When 
the canoes, however, had paddled about fifteen 
miles, a fire was seen on the bank, and all stopped. 



104 STORIES FROM .LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

From wliat tliey saw, Priidliomme had evidently 
just left the fire, and the search for him began anew. 
Some of the Indians and white men at last found 
the poor man. He was on a raft, Avhich he had made 
to float down the river, hoping to come up with the 
canoes. He had been lost ten days, during which, 
he said, he had eaten nothing. Great was the joy 
of the camp to see him again alive ; and the men put 
out in their canoes from the bank with renewed 
spirits. 

And ever as they went along, the great river 
unfolded still newer scenes for their ejes. 
Now, they came to cane-brakes so dense that the 
hunters could not make a Avay through them; and 
now the current divided to flow around islands 
that rose fresh and green from the yellow water. 
Winter dropped ever further behind them ; and with 
each day they seemed to come closer and closer 
upon spring. The long, thin twigs of the willows 
along the banks turned a faint green and then 
blossomed ; the vines that had twisted like dry ropes 
around the forest trees turned into living garlands, 
which soon were hung Avith clusters of flowers and 
fruit. The wild peach and plum scented the air 
with their fragrance. 

One morning, when a fog hid both banks from 
the canoes in the river, a Avar cry and the beating of 



THE NAMIXG OF LOUISIANA. 105 

drums were heard on the right. La Salle ordered 
the canoes to the left bank, and set the men to 
making a barricade behind which they might be safe 
in case the warlike sounds meant an attack. When 
the fog cleared, an Indian village was seen on the 
other bank, whose people, taking the French for 
enemies, Avere hastily getting ready for them. As 
the French did not move from their side, the 
Indians sent a canoe across the river to spy out 
who and what they were. The canoe stopped in 
mid stream, and a warrior shot an arrow towards 
the camp; the custom of the Indians to find 
out whether war or peace be meant. As the answer 
of the French was not an arrow, but a calumet, held 
out by La Salle, the Indians paddled their canoes 
back to the village, and soon another canoe was seen 
coming, filled with Avarriors, bearing a calumet. 
They landed and presented it to La Salle and to all 
the Frenchmen, who smoked it, each in turn. Then 
the warriors asked the strangers to come to their 
village. They did so; the whole party getting at 
once into their canoes and crossing the river. When 
they reached the landing place, they found all the 
men of the village waiting to receive them. The 
women and children had fled to the woods on the 
first alarm, and were still hiding. 

The village belonged to the Kappas^ a tribe of the 



lOG STORIES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Arkansas Indians. The French thought them the 
handsomest savages they had ever seen, and the 
pleasantest and most polite. They were dressed in 
skins. Their cabins were well built, and roofed 
with the bark of cypress trees. Their canoes were 
also made of cypress, dug out of the solid log, not 
of bark like those of the Canadians. There were 
peach and other fruit trees in the village ; and what 
the French had never seen among other savages, 
plenty of chickens. When the Kappas saw that the 
French would rather stay to themselves, they were 
not offended, but like good hosts, helped to make 
shelters for them out of the green boughs outside 
the village; sweeping a clean place for the camp, 
and bringing them all the firewood they needed. 
When the women came back from the woods, La 
Salle made them presents of beads and lit- 
tle trifles, which delighted them so much, 
that they brought him a fine supply of corn 
and beans, dried plums, persimmons, and 
grapes. On the next day a great feast was given 
by the village, when the Peace or Calumet Dance 
was danced. Around the open playground, in the 
center of the village, forked poles were stuck, upon 
which were hung the presents to be given the 
French. In the center of the space was a bare, 
straight pole. The dance began by one of the chiefs 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. 107 

of the tribe entering the ring, bearing two calumets 
of red clay, filled with tobacco and gaily decked 
with feathers. For music there was a great rattling 
of empty gourds filled with pebbles, and much beat- 
ing of great earthen pots, covered with dressed 
skins. After this, warrior after warrior, in full 
war paint and feathers, stepped into the ring and 
chanted the great deeds he had done on the war 
path, dancing in a stately step all the Avliile around 
the center pole, and casting his tomahawk into it 
for every enemy he had killed. 

At the end of the dance, sixty buffalo skins were 
given to La Salle. The next day La Salle, in his 
turn, gave the village an entertainment, and it must 
have seemed as curious to the Indians as the cal- 
umet dance to the Frenchmen. He took possession 
of the land in the name of the King of France. It 
was done in this manner : A great tree was felled 
and its trunk squared into a pillar, upon which was 
painted the figure of the cross, and under this, the 
arms of the King of France, with the inscription, 
'^Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, 
13th March, 1682." 

This was brought in solemn procession from the 
camp to the village, the priest marching in front, 
and all the Frenchmen following, singing a Latin 
hymn. Three times around the open space they 



108 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

walked, singing; then the pillar Avas fixed upright in 
the ground. La Salle, taking his place by it, read 
in a loud voice from a pape;;* in his hand, that in the 
name of the most high and noble and victorious 
Prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God, King 
of France and Kavarre, the 14th of his name, on 
the 13th of March, 1682, and with the consent of the 
nation of the Arkansas, assembled in the village of 
Kapaha, and present at the time, he, in virtue jof 
the commission which he held in his hand, took pos- 
session of the country of Louisiana and of all its 
provinces, peoples, mines, ports, in short of all 
the land Avatered by the Mississippi and its 
branches, from its source in the North, to its mouth 
in the Gulf. 

A translation in the Arkansas language was then 
made to the Indians, Avho stood around gazing 
curiously. "Vive le IJoi!" was shouted by the 
Frenchmen, the guns Avere fired in salute, and 
France thus gained her title to the great country, 
to which La Salle gaA^e the beautiful name of 
''Louisiana,'' after Louis XIV. 

The other villages of this tribe were one about 
twenty miles beloAv on the river, and the one visited 
by Marquette and Joliet, at the mouth of the Ar- 
kansas river. The Indians of both received the 
Frenchmen well, and begged them to stav and 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. 1(39 

dance the calumet with them ; but La Salle, in haste 
to get on with his journe}', would not stop. Losing, 
once, a day, by a strong Avind, his men paddled all 
niglit by moonlight to make up, resting at day-- 
light for a few hours on a small flat island^ 
covered with willows. The next night they camped 
on a large, beautiful island, covered with laurel, 
mulberry and other fine forest trees. The following 
day, while they were paddling along, they 
killed two deer, and a, day later they killed 
their first crocodile, and ate the meat for 
supper, making a great frolic over it, and finding 
that it tasted very good. That night they stopped 
at a little stream which led into Lake Tensas. 
Again they camped on an island in the river, and as 
they had done on all the other islands, they made 
a barricade of timber and brush around the camp 
for fear of an Indian surprise. The next day, they 
saw ahead of them a canoe of Indians crossing the 
river, from the right to the left. The Frenchmen 
paddled at full speed through the water to catch 
up with them, but stopped short when they came in 
sight of a fishing camp of about two hundred In- 
dians, who, giving their shrill war cries, at once 
caught up their tomahawks, bows and arrows. La 
Salle turned his canoes to the other side of the river 
and waited there while Tonty and five men carried 



110 STORIES FROM LOl'ISIAXA HISTORY. 

the calumet to the savages. After smoking it to- 
gether, Tontv came back with a friendly message 
from the Indians, and La Salle crossed over to the 
fishing place and camped there, and afterwards went 
to the villages of the Indians, some miles back from 
the river bank. This was the celebrated village of 
the Natchez, who, as we shall see, played a great 
part in the early history of Louisiana. While La 
Salle was there, the chief of the Coroas, the next 
tribe on the river, came to see him, and La Salle 
visited his village also. 

The following day, which was Easter, the expedi- 
tion came to the Houma village, opposite the mouth 
of Red River; but did not stop at it. Three days 
later, the canoes saw some Indians fishing on the 
right bank, and called to them; but the Indians 
fled, and soon the beating of the drum and war cries 
came from behind a cane-brake. La Salle landed 
and sent a party of his men towards it 
with the calumet ; but they were received with a 
volley of arrows. The Indian guide said they were 
(Juinipissas. The Frenchmen went on their way 
down the river, until now they saw on the left bank 
another village, over which hovered flocks of buz- 
zards. They landed here and found a ghastly sight ; 
five large cabins filled with corpses, and the ground 
running blood. The rest of the village had been 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. Ill 

burned. La Salle found out afterwards that this 
was the village of the Tangipahoas, and that the 
enemies who had destroyed them were the Chou- 
ehoumas. 

The banks now grew so flat and low, that at night 
the men had to pile up rushes or brush to get a dry 
sleeping place. It was the time of the spring rise 
in the Mississippi, and as they went on further, they 
found even the forests overflowed. Then after some 
days, the forests ceased, and on each side of the 
river were seen only vast open prairies stretching 
out for miles; trembling prairies, covered with tall 
rushes, with no solid land, save here and there, 
a spot like an island, upon which grew clusters of 
trees. Whenever these could be found on the bank, 
the camp was made. And here, one afternoon, one 
of the Frenchmen, climbing to the top of a tree, 
saw, beyond the flat, green prairie, a great expanse 
of water shining in the sun. 

La Salle knew then that the great river was com- 
ing to the end of its long course, and on the morrow 
the canoes had not made ten miles before they came 
to the three mouths or passes, by which it pours 
its floods into the Gulf of Mexico. The canoes pad- 
dled into the right hand pass and into the middle 
channel, but turned back, as they saw no chance of 
finding a camping place. Over the low banks, the 



112 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

tide was then rising. They at last found a 
dry spot on the bank of the right hand 
pass, opposite an island, where they killed 
a quantity of red and white herons and 
other marine birds. In the morning, La Salle went 
through the right pass, while Tonty went through 
the middle one, and another canoe took the left one. 
All three came out at the open water of the Gulf 
and saw the muddy current of the river running 
far out before it mingled with the clear, blue 
depths. 

The dream of La Salle had come to pass. He had 
explored the great river whose course and end, as 
the Indians had told him, were unknown to man. In 
the satisfaction of that moment all the past ten 
years of disappointment and trouble must have 
passed from his memory. Now nothing was 
needed to complete his triumph, but to make public 
proclamation, that he, the discoverer of the region, 
took possession of it for his sovereign, the King of 
France. The ceremony at the Kappas' village was 
repeated, but with greater solemnity. There was no 
one to witness it but the Avhite men, Indians, 
squaws, and pappooses who had made the long jour- 
ney down there together. A tree was sought, cut, 
squared, and planted in the ground, to bear 
the arms of the King of France. A great 



THE NAMING OF LOUISIANA. 113 

cross was raised beside it, and in the earth 
at its feet was buried a leaden plate, on 
which were written the words: ''In the name of 
Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre, 9 April, 
1682." The priest, followed by La Salle and his 
little band, sang the Latin hymn, ''Vexilla Regis." 
La Salle read aloud the act by which he took pos- 
session of the river and all the land that it and its 
branches flowed through; the land of Louisiana. 
The Te Deum was sung, a salute of musketry fired, 
and "Vive le Roi!" was shouted in the solemn 
stillness of nature. 

The canoes were then turned up stream, and the 
long voyage back to Lake Michigan was begun. Day 
after day the men plied their paddles, night after 
night the camp w^as made, as in the journey down. 
Indian villages were stopped at; the calumet was 
smoked with the tribes. But La Salle was seized 
with a desperate illness and was forced to stop at 
Fort Prudhomme, while the rest went on without 
him. For forty days he lay in danger of his life, 
but as soon as he had strength enough he set out 
again for Mackinaw, where Tonty awaited him. 
He and Tonty then went back with a band of men 
to the Illinois river, and on a great rock that rose 
one hundred and twenty-five feet above the river, 
near the site of the destroyed Illinois village, they 



114: STOUIES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

built a fort, which La Salle named St. Louis. The 
two passed the winter here, making friends of the 
Indians, who came from all the country round 
about to settle at the fort. Greatly pleased with 
his success, thus far. La Salle, in the fall of 1683, 
turned the fort over to the command of Tonty, and 
went to Canada, and from there to France, to carry 
out the next steps in his scheme. 



LA SALLE'S LAST VOYAaE. 

In France, La Salle appeared before King Louis 
XIV himself, and told him of the great river, the 
Mississippi, that he had explored, and of the vast 
and rich country he had taken possession of for 
France. He unfolded his plan of holding this coun- 
try by building forts along the course of the river, 
and he proposed now to build a fort and make a set- 
tlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, which 
would not only prevent the ships of any other 
power from entering the river, but would also 
give France a port and a stronghold that could 
protect her ships upon the Gulf of Mexico. For, 
over the Gulf, as has been said, the Spaniards 



LA SALLE'S LAST VOYAGE. 115 

ruled as lords and masters. Instead, however, 
of making again the long and toilsome journey 
from Canada, La Salle wished now to sail 
from Prance direct to the mouth of the Missis 
sippi, taking with him the colonists and the mate- 
rials and provisions for the settlement. The king 
gave him not only the two ships he asked for, but a 
third vessel, a royal man-of-war, to escort the ex- 
pedition, and to protect it, in the Gulf of Mexico, 
from the Spaniards. 

One hundred soldiers were enlisted and eighty 
colonists to go out to the new country ; mechanics of 
all kinds, farmers, laborers, with some gentlemen of 
good family, and well-to-do tradesmen. Some of the 
men took their families with them. Some young 
girls w^ent along hoping to get homes and husbands 
in the new, sweetly named country of Louisiana. 

As Providence before had sent to La Salle the true 
and loyal Tonty, so now again was sent to him a 
faithful companion and good friend, Henri Joutel. 
Joutel was a Eouen boy, the nephew of a gardener 
of the La Salle family. Hie was a soldier and had 
been away from home sixteen years. When he came 
back to Kouen, he found the people there all talking 
about the new enterprise of La Salle. La Salle's 
brother, the Abb^ Cavelier, and his two nephews, 
Cavelier and Moranget, had joined it. Joutel him- 
self was too fond of adventure not to join it, also, 



116 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

In July, 1684, La Salle's four ships set sail from 
La Eoclielle; the royal man-of-war, ^^Joly"; a large 
ship, the "Amiable"; the bark, "La Belle"; and a 
small vessel called a "ketch." The last three were 
heavily loaded, and sailed so slowly, that it was 
September before the expedition reached San Do- 
mingo, where a stop was to be made for fresh sup- 
plies of food and water. The man-of-war came first 
into port, and after a few days the lagging "Amia- 
ble" and "La Belle"; but the "ketch," which was 
thought to be following, never came. She was cap- 
tured off the coast of Cuba by Spanish buccaneers. 
The ships were but a short time at San Domingo 
before fever broke out among the crew and pas- 
sengers, who had to be put ashore for fresh air and 
treatment. La Salle, himself, became very ill of it 
and when the loss of the "ketch" with all her cargv) 
of stores was told to him, he fell into a violent 
delirium and came near dying. It was the end of 
November before all were well enough to sail away. 

When La Salle was at the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, the year before, he took the latitude of it, but 
failed to get the longitude, which would have given 
him the sure course to find it. He had hoped to get 
some advice about it in San Domingo, but the gulf 
coast was unknown to the people there. No one 
could be found who had ever explored it, or knew 



LA SALLE^S LAST VOYAGE. 117 

of any one who had done so. All that La 
Salle could learn was, that in the gulf there 
was a very strong current towards the East, 
which bore ships out of their course, un- 
less the pilot made allowance for it by steering 
to the West. Unfortunately, La Salle heeded this 
as a true warning. When he sailed into the gulf, 
instead of steering a straight course, which would 
have brought him to the coast of Florida, he steered 
to the West, and so, as there was no strong easterly 
current to bear his ships back, they sailed past the 
mouth of the Mississippi. When land was sighted, 
La Salle thought it was Florida, but it was Texas. 
He sailed slowly along the shore line, looking for 
the mouth of the river, and anchoring at 
night and in fogs so as not to pass it 
unknowingly. Whenever a curve in the shore 
showed anything like a bay or the mouth of 
a river La Salle would send a boat ashore 
with an exploring party. Once, one of these parties 
came back with some Indians, and La Salle tried to 
ask them about the river, but he could not under- 
stand them nor they him, and so nothing was 
learned from them. Thus, he sailed onward ever 
further and further away from the mouth of the 
Mississippi. At last he reached tlhe large bay 
which we know as Matagorda Bay. 



118 STOIilKS FROM LOUISIANA lIISTOlli'. 

Fort St. Louis in Texas. 

The low flat shore, covered with rushes, the sand 
islands and reefs, and the muddy water, were not 
different from Avhat he had seen about the mouth of 
the Mississippi. When the exploring party returned 
and reported that they had found a river emptying 
into it at the further end, he thought this might be 
an arm of the Mississippi. He was in doubt about 
it, and had the season not been so late, in order to 
be sure, he would have turned his ships and sailed 
back again along the shore, when, as we know, he 
could not have failed to find the river. But the 
colonists were suffering from their long confine- 
ment on shipboard, and Beaujeu, the commander of 
the "Joly," was impatient to get on his way back 
to France. La Salle, therefore, despite his doubt, 
decided to land his colony here. He was sure, at 
least, of one thing, that he was somewhere in the 
neighborhood of tlie river. He was, in truth, four 
hundred miles away from it. With his usual 
energy, as soon as he got his colony ashore, he put 
the men to work, clearing a space for a camp, col- 
lecting timber to build houses and barns to store the 
provisions in, and to make canoes for use in the 
river. He sounded the bay and the channel care- 
fully, and had them marked so that the "Amiable" 
could come tli rough in safety to land her cargo. 



Port st. Louis in texas. 119 

On a bright morning, the ship with spread sails 
was just coming in, and La Salle was watching her 
from the shore, when the cry came to him, that a 
band of Indians had fallen upon one of the working 
parties, and had carried two men off. There was 
nothing for him to do but to start at once after the 
Indians and to rescue his men. But as he turned 
away and left the coast, he exclaimed anxiously to 
Joutel, who was with him : ^^If she does not 
change her course, she will surely go aground.'' 
The Indians carried their prisoners to their camp, 
about five miles away. By the time La Salle 
reached the camp, a cannon shot from the ^^Amia- 
ble" boomed upon the air. The Indians, frightened 
to death at the strange thunder, fell upon the 
ground. La Salle knew what it meant; it was a 
signal of distress from the "Amiable.'' As soon as 
he could get his men from the Indians, he hastened 
back to the beach to look for the "xlmiable." What 
he feared, had happened ; the great ship lay helpless 
on her side on a reef. She was lost. But the cargo 
might be saved. La Salle worked with all his might 
and urged his men to work. With what boats and 
canoes they could gather, they hurried to the 
stranded ship. The gunpowder was first taken out 
and brought ashore, and then the fiour. But the 
wind rose and great waves, rolling in from the gulf. 



120 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

broke over the reef and the helpless ship, pounding 
upon it, shivering and shaking it, and rocking it to 
and fro. The men jumped upon the deck, and at the 
risk of their lives, cut away the masts. But the 
wind growing stronger and the waves greater, it 
became harder and harder to board the wreck, and 
many of the boats lost their loads in getting aw^ay 
from her. At last the danger was so great that 
the men had to give up. The ship went to pieces 
that night; and in the morning, the beach 
all around the bay was strewn with bar- 
rels of wine, boxes of goods, fragments of timber, 
papers, books, bales, and bundles — all that w^as 
light enough to float; but the guns, balls, nails, 
hatchets, axes, saw^s, the furnaces, grindstones, and 
the iron and steel cooking pots, the anvils, the casks 
of salt, and all the heavier articles— they strewed 
tlie bottom of the bay. 

Two of his vessels and their cargoes lost I 
Surely La Salle's heart must have sunk within 
him. But he gave^ no sign of it. He sent 
men up and down the beach to gather and save what 
they could of the drift, which he piled in one place, 
and kept under guard, not alone for fear of Indians, 
but also of the dishonest among his own colonists. 
For most of these had been picked up in France, as 
colonists were picked up in those days, among the 



FORT ST. LOUIS IN TEXAS. 1^1 

good and bad, the poor and the needy, the beggars, 
the vagrants, and even the criminal classes. Often 
they were captured by force and made drunk, and 
put upon a ship, and came to themselves only when 
upon the high sea in a vessel bound for they knew 
not where. In spite of the sentinels, the Indians 
managed to steal a good deal, as some Frenchmen 
found upon a visit to their camp. La Salle sent a 
party, under his nephew, Moranget, to claim these 
articles. Moranget was high tempered and domi- 
neering, and did not know how to deal with the 
Indians; and so the only result of his expedition 
was, two men killed and two others, besides himself, 
wounded. The sight of the killed and wounded 
threw the newly landed colonists into a panic ; and 
a dread of the Indians was added to their other 
miseries. 

They were encamped on the beach, exposed 
to the hot sun by day and the dampness by 
night. Most of them were still weak from the fever 
caught at San Domingo. Their biscuits had been 
lost in the wreck ; they had no ovens to bake more. 
As provisions were measured out to them in scanty 
rations, and they had only sea water to cook with, 
it is not surprising that they ate the shell fish they 
found, and berries and fruit, without knowing 
whether they were wholesome or not. And they 



122 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

would drink at once all their portion of fresh water, 
and afterwards, when thirsty, drink salt or brackish 
water. Such numbers of them fell ill that the camp 
was soon a hospital. Every day some one died, and 
around the graves of the two young men killed by 
the Indians, so many other graves were dug that it 
seenned as if the only settlement to be made in the 
new laud was that of the dead. 

As soon as possible after seeing the colonists 
landed, Beaujeu sailed away in the "Joly." He had, 
from the first, disliked the duty of escorting La 
Salle, and showed this so plainly that La Salle soon 
grew to dislike Beaujeu bitterly, and showed it 
plainly, and became as eager to get rid of his royal 
escort, as Beaujeu was to get rid of him. Unfortu- 
nately this ill-will between the two men had ham- 
pered the expedition all along. It had stood in the 
way of a more thorough search for the mouth of the 
Mississippi, and now, although Beaujeu was sure 
that La Salle had made a mistake, it kept him from 
helping him in a friendly way, as it kept La Salle 
from asking Beaujeu's advice and help. La Salle, 
however, soon proved to his colonists what kind of a 
man he was, into whose keeping they had given their 
lives and their fortunes. He' gave himself to them, 
mi ad and body; ever planning and thinking for 
them, iind ever foremost in the work, or in the dan- 



FORT ST. LOUIS IN TEXAS. 123 

ger, of carrying out his plans, and ever the last in 
rest or recreation. His patience was as endless as his 
energy. He was strict, stern, and haughty ; it is 
true, but not unjust. He bore his own great losses 
and misfortunes, as we have seen, without murmur- 
ing; and he only demanded that those under him 
should bear their smaller ones in like spirit. Un- 
fortunately, the trials that call forth great qualities 
in heroic hearts, call forth base ones in hearts of 
weaker strength. What we admire in La Salle 
now-a-days, is what gained him the hatred and 
enmity of many of his colonists. 

When he had made the camp safe from the In- 
dians by raising around it a fortification and had 
built some cabins and storehouses, he set out with 
fifty men to explore the shores of the bay and to 
find a better place for the settlement; one where 
there was fresh water and pasturage for the live 
stock, and better soil for a garden. He found such 
a spot on the rising bank of the little river La Vaca, 
which flows into the head of Matagorda Bay. 
In April he removed the colony to it. As sickness 
still held on to the emigrants, many of them were 
taken in a dying condition to the new home, and 
only reached it to be buried there. 

It was hard work, indeed, building the great fort 
which La Salle had planned, in the heat of summer, 



124 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

with such poor working force as the colonists 
proved themselves to be ; some of them never having 
done a day's honest labor in their lives. The woods 
where the timber was cut, was at some distance 
from the settlement, and as there were no horses or 
oxen, the men themselves had to drag the heavy 
logs over rough ground, until, at last, they found 
they could make use of a gun carriage; but even 
then, the strain was so great that the strongest 
broke down under it. The garden was made and the 
seeds, brought from France, sowed in it; but there 
was a drought during tlie summer, and the plants 
were parched in the ground. Nevertheless, by 
October, in spite of the sickness, the shirking from 
work, the constant fear of the Indians, and the gen- 
eral discouragement, a large fort was put up, and a 
stout wall built around it. La Sf lie then felt he 
could leave the settlement, and carry out his inten- 
tion of going in search of the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, for he was determined to find the place he had 
taken possession of, and to settle the colony there, 
as he had told the king he would do. 

To be sure of not missing it, this time, he resolved 
to go along the shore in a canoe, and to make explor- 
ations inland as he went along, while ''La Belle'' 
followed, anchoring every night opposite the place 
where he camped. He was so sure, indeed, of find- 



FORT ST. LOUIS IN TEXAS. 125 

ing the mouth of the Mississippi, that "La Belle" 
was loaded with most of the provisions in the 
settlement; and with a quantity of merchandise 
and arms, tools, cannon, powder, lead, a forge, and 
with the personal property of himself, the priests, 
and officers of the expedition; their boxes of cloth- 
ing, linen, papers, silver and crockery, and two 
thousand livres in gold. She carried, in fact, the 
best part of the supplies still left in the colony. 

Twenty-seven men went in "La Belle"; fifty in 
canoes accompanied La Salle. They started the 
last of October; La Salle putting Joutel in com- 
mand of the fort. 

There were but thirty-four persons in all, left in 
it ; three priests, the girls and married women, sol- 
diers and workmen. Joutel proved himself a good 
commander. Strict guard was kept up ; the sentinels 
were changed every two hours, and if a.nj of them 
was caught sleeping at his post, he was punished. 
Details of men went outside the wall every day to 
bring in the wood and water needed. One of the 
regular emplo^, ments was to kill buffalo and dry the 
meat. From the top of a house one could get a gooa 
view of the prairies round about; and whenever 
buffaloes were seen, the men started out at once 
with their guns. At first the Frenchmen did not 
know how to kill the buffalo, and lost a great many, 



126 STOKIIuS FROM LU I LSI AN A HISTORY. 

and had all kinds of mishaps with them ; but they 
were soon taught by experience. Where the animal 
fell, he was killed and butchered. The priests went 
out with the hunters, and even the women and girls 
Avent along and helped to carry away the meat ; for, 
as Joutel said, if they ate they must also work. In 
the fort the meat was cut in small strips, dried 
in the sun, and smoked. Once one of the priests was 
lost for a night and a day, and great fear was felt 
that he had been killed by the Indians; and 
when he came back safe and sound, there was great 
rejoicing. Another time, one of the 3^oung girls lost 
her way, and when she did not return, guns were 
fired and even the cannon shot off; and parties 
were sent in all directions to search for her. She, 
too, was given up as killed by the Indians. But 
after two nights and two days, she made her way 
back, being guided to the fort by the river, as the 
priest had been. Every day, morning and evening, 
prayers were said by all in common; on Sundays 
and feast days, mass was celebrated. Two or three 
men died — to the grief of the little band; but there 
were no crimes nor bad conduct. 

As for La Salle, at the very beginning of his ex- 
pedition, he lost four or five men from eating 
poisonous berries; and ^^La Belle" lost six men, 
who, against La Salle's orders, carelessly slept 



FORT ST. LOUIS IN TEXAS. 127 

ashore one night around a camp fire, and thus were 
surprised and killed by the Indians. La Salle, 
coming back to the coast after a journey inland, 
found their dead bodies and buried them. Keturn- 
iug to his inland exploration, he Avent through a 
vast extent of country. He saw beautiful prairies 
and great forests, and he killed much game; he met 
many different tribes of Indians, and came to a 
Avider river ; but he found not the Mississippi. The 
time he had allowed for his absence ran out, so he 
turned back to the fort. He reached it in March^ 
sending some of his men to the bay to bring him 
news of ''La Belle," which he had left anchored 
there. 

These men came to the fort one day after him ; 
they had not seen ''La Belle," nor any sign of her or 
her crew anywhere along the coast. This threw La 
Salle into great uneasiness. What had become of 
the boat and all the valuable property she carried? 
Could she have been wrecked? Was she aground 
somewhere? Or could her^crew have run away with 
her to the islands? If this last were the case, he had 
a hope that the governor of San Domingo would 
seize her and send her back. He saw now what a 
great mistake he had made in not foreseeing some 
accident and keeping at least half of her cargo at 
the fort. But when he started he had been confident 



128 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

of finding the mouth of the Mississippi. This loss 
was the worst blow of all, worse, indeed, than the 
loss of the "Griffin," the "ketch,'' and the 
"Amiable," all combined. Indeed, with "La Belle" 
went all hope for the colony. How, now, if he 
found the Mississippi, could he transport the colony 
to it? And if he did not find the Mississippi, he 
could, with the vessel, at least have taken the poor 
unfortunates who had followed him back to San 
Domingo. With the vessel, he could always send to 
the island for provisions or for help. Without 
her, he was no better than a cast-away on an 
unknown coast, without the means of getting away 
from it, or getting help to it. There was but one 
course open to him now; to make his way to 
Canada, and to get word to France of the desperate 
straits of the colony. In April, as soon as he rested 
from his last journey, he set out again, taking 
twenty men with him, and leaving the fort again 
under command of Joutel. 

As before, Joutel kept up good guard against' the 
Indians, and sent out hunting parties to kill buffalo, 
and as this weakened the number of men at the fort, 
he made the women and girls take their turn at 
sentinel duty with the men. About the first of May, 
some of the men who had sailed in "La Belle," 
arrived at the fort, bringing an account of the wreck 



FORT ST. LOUIS IN TEXAS. 129 

of the vessel. Only six men of the crew and some of 
La Salle's clothing and papers were saved. The cer- 
tainty that ^^La Belle" was lost threw the colonists 
into great discouragement. They could see,' as well 
as La Salle, how desperate their situation was with- 
out a vessel. Joutel worked harder than ever to keep 
them busy' and amused. He would gather them all 
together of an evening, when they would dance and 
sing songs; and although he had been ordered to 
measure out the rations very sparingly, he did so 
only when food was scarce. When the hunters killed 
plenty of buffalo, he would give the colonists as 
much meat as they could eat. There was love-making 
among the young people, and even a marriage. The 
men, women, and girls all iDracticed shooting at a 
target, and Joutel gave little prizes for the best 
shot ; and so the time passed pleasantly, even gaily. 
As before, prayers were said together, morning 
and evening. Mass was celebrated on feast days 
and holidays. The chapel was only a rude log cabin 
thatched with grass and reeds; but the altar was 
prettily decorated by the good priests with images 
and pictures. Whenever there were any murmurs 
about La Salle being away so long, Joutel would 
preach patience, and tell how long it would take to 
go up the Mississippi to the Illinois country and re- 
turn. When the summer came on, a space in the 



130 STORlKtS FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

open was cleared for a plaj-ground, and here 
of evenings Jontel would get them all to play- 
ing games; each one contributing his or her 
share to the general fun. They were amus- 
ing themselves, thus, one evening, when La Salle 
returned. He brought back only eight men 
of the twenty who had set out in April. Four had 
deserted, one had been eaten by an alligator, one 
had been lost, and the rest had given out on the 
march, and never been heard of afterwards. The 
evening was passed by the anxious colonists in 
listening to the tale of all that had happened in the 
long and dismal journey which their leader and 
his little band had made. They had gone to the 
North until they saw, as far as the eye could reach, 
vast prairies alive with buffalo. They had crossed 
the Colorado river, and turning their steps towards 
the East, had come to a region thick with Indian 
villages. In crossing a river on a raft. La Salle 
was caught in the current and swept out of sight, 
and his men had to wait so long for him that they 
thought they would never see him again. They 
reached the villages of the Cenis Indians, in the 
country watered by Trinity river. Here the Indians 
received them well, and sold them five horses, which 
La Salle brought back to the fort. After leaving 
these Indians he and his nephew were taken Avith 
a fever, whicli kept them in one camp for more thau 



:muki)eu of la salli:. 131 

two months. Wlieu they were well euough to travel 
again, their ammunition was nearly out, so they 
saw that they must return to the fort. 

Even before La Salle began to talk, the colonists 
knew that he had not found what he went for — the 
Mississippi river, and that all the time he had been 
away was time lost. Their hearts sank with disap- 
pointment. Of the hundred and eighty who had set 
out from France, only forty-five remained. What 
was to be their fate? Hope and trust in La Salle, 
alone, saved them from despair. He walked among 
them with so calm and serene a face, spoke so cheer- 
fully and bravely to them, kept them so busy in and 
about the fort, that he inspired them all with some 
of his own great nature. Christmas came, and the 
great festival was celebrated with a fervor and de- 
votion that none of them had ever felt before. There 
was a midnight mass, at which all made vows to 
God, and prayed Him to guide and protect them in 
their forlorn condition. Twelfth Night was passed 
in a gay frolic, and the old game, ^the king 
drinks," was played with water instead of wine, but 
the fun and laughter were only the greater. 

Murder of La Salle. 

A few days later La Salle, for the third time, led 
a party from the fort, in his last and only hope to 
reach Canada and in some way get a ship to come 



132 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

to the colony. Seventeen men went with him, 
among whom were his brother, Cavelier, his two 
nephews, Moranget and young Cavelier, Father An- 
astase, and the sturdy and trusty Joutel. 

La Salle made an address to the twenty who were 
to stay at the fort. His words were so tender and 
so kind, his manner so full of feeling, his sentiment 
so noble, that the little coiony was melted to tears; 
and the good byes were said as if, indeed, each one 
knew the parting might be forever. 

La Salle led his men along, in easy stages, 
through the country he had been over, in the direc- 
tion of the Cenis villages. When he met Indians, 
La Salle was most careful to treat them well, so that 
they should have no cause to make war on the feeble 
band left in the" fort. Sometimes the band came to 
thickets and cane-brakes so dense that they could 
not have made their way through, had they not fol- 
lowed the buffalo paths. But when it rained, these 
paths were running streams, and when it was dry, 
they were so hard and rugged, that the men suffered 
cruelly, for they were shod in moccasins, made of 
raw buffalo hide, which, unless it was kept wet, 
grew as tight and hard as iron around their feet. 
Fortunately for them, after a while they were able 
to get some dressed skins from the Indians. They 
had a great many rivers to cross, and each time hacj 



MUIiDEli OF LA SALLE. 133 

to unload tlieir horses and carry the loads over, 
while the horses swam to the other side, and were 
then loaded again. Sometimes the rains kept them 
three and four days at a time in the camp, and then 
they would find all the streams so swollen that they 
were afraid to cross. They made a boat by sewing- 
four buffalo skins together and stretching them 
over a frame, and putting grease on the seams to 
prevent them from leaking. This was a great help, 
for after using the boat, they could take the skin off 
the frame and carry it along on one of the horses. 
Where there were no buffalo tracks to guide them, 
they had to look out a passage for themselves in 
the cane-brakes and thickets. January and Feb- 
ruary passed, and March came on. They had pushed 
along towards the Xortheast, across the Brazos 
river, and had reached the Trinity river, which ran 
through the country of the Cenis Indians. 

All along there was much ill humor and quarrel- 
ing among the little band. La Salle, busy with his 
own thoughts and feelings, held himself apart from 
the men ; his nephew, Moranget, was hated by all of 
them. La Salle, himself, was hated by some of 
them, who even in the fort had conspired against 
him. Therefore the long and toilsome journey was 
made doubly hard and toilsome by the want of the 
hearty good will and good fellowship, which, as we 



134 , STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

have seen, Joutel kept up so well in the little Fort 
St. Louis. 

It so happened that on the 15th of March, they 
camped eight or ten miles from a place where 
La Salle, the year before, coming back from the 
Cenis village, had buried some corn and beans in the 
ground, for the Indians had given him more than 
he could carry, and he prudently hid some, in case 
he should return that way and be in need of food. 
As his supply of food was now getting low, he de- 
cided to send a party of men to the hiding place 
for the corn and beans. The men found the place, 
but the grains were rotting and spoiled, so they 
were returning empty-handed, when they came 
across two buffaloes. They stopped and killed them 
and sent a messenger to La Salle, asking for horses 
to carry the beef to the camp. La Salle sent his 
nephew, Moranget, and two other Frenchmen 
with the horses, and ordered them to load one 
horse with a part of the meat, and send it at once 
to the camp; while they stayed with the 
other and dried the rest of the meat. When IMoran- 
get reached the men, he found them busy cutting up 
the meat and drying it. The marrow bones and 
those parts of the meat which would not do to dry, 
they laid aside to cook for their supper. Moranget, 
in his high-handed way, at once took possession of 



MURDER OF LA SALLE. 135 

the meat, telling the men that in future he should 
have charge of it, and that they need not expect to 
have so much of it as in the past. He even, in the 
rudest manner, took away from tliem what they had 
laid aside for themselves, and tliat niglit, at supper, 
he served himself with the best and the most of the 
beef, measuring out small pieces of it to the others. 
There was not a man in the group who had not 
cause to hate him for trying to pla^^ the tyrant w^ith 
them man^^ times before. Each one had some insult 
to remember, to revenge. This last act l)rought all 
they had suffered in the past from Moranget back to 
them, and in their temper, they resolved that they 
would suffer no more from him, but be revenged 
upon him at once. So that night while Moranget, 
his man, and the guide slept, they were knocked on 
the head with a hatchet and killed. When the deed 
was done, the assassins saw that, for their own 
tuifety, they must also kill La Salle, his brother, 
Cavelier, his other nephew, and Joutel. They would 
at once have gone to camp and carried out their 
bloody design, but that a little river which lay in 
their way was so swollen by the rain, that they had 
to stop and make a raft to cross it. 

When the evening came, but not the ex- 
pected horse with the meat, and when the next day 
passed and still there came no horse and no mes- 



136 STORIES FllOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

senger, La Salle grew anxious, and did not know 
what to think of it. He made up his mind to go, 
himself, and see what had happened. Leaving his 
brother, his nephew, Cavelier, and Joutel at the 
camp, he set forth with Father Anastase, the priest, 
and an Indian guide. As he walked nearer and 
nearer the spot where he expected to find the men, 
and saw no sign of them. La Salle became more and 
more troubled. Looking up and seeing eagles cir- 
cling in the air, he judged that they could not be far 
off. He fired off his gun, so that if they heard it, 
they could answer. But the signal brought no re- 
ply ; it only warned the assassins to make ready for 
him ; for they did not doubt but that he was coming 
in search of Moranget. Two of the men crossed the 
river; one of them hid in the bushes on the bank. 
La Salle, seeing the other one, asked where Moran- 
get was. He was answered: "Somewhere round 
about." At that instant came the crack of the gun 
from the man in the bushes, and La Salle fell, shot 
in the head. 

Satisfied with the blood they had shed, the 
assassins did not attempt the life of Joutel, nor of 
the Abb^ Cavelier, nor of the young nephew. But 
they carried them along with them to the Cenis vil- 
lage, and kept them there for two months. One day 
the assassins fell to quarreling, and two were shot 



MURDER OF LA SALLE. ISt 

and killed. Joutel and the Caveliers, with Pere 
Anastase and three others of their party, then man- 
aged to escape. They made their way across the 
country to the East, and after two months of hard 
marching, reached the Arkansas, not far from 
where it joins the Mississippi. Here they found two 
of Tonty's men. Tonty had heard that La Salle had 
landed at the mouth of the Mississippi, and collect- 
ing a party of Canadians and Indians, he had gone 
there in canoes to meet him. But finding no trace of 
him, he had gone back to Fort St. Louis on the Illin- 
ois, leaving these men at the Arkansas village to 
wait and watch for news of La Salle. Joutel and his 
party arrived at Fort St. Louis in September, but 
could not get on to Canada till the following spring. 
They sailed for France in August, and reached 
Rochelle in October, 1688, four years and three 
months after they had set sail from it. 

And what became of the little band of twenty- 
six who were left in Fort St. Louis of Texas? 
When the brave a.nd generous Tonty heard from 
Joutel and the Caveliers of their sad condition, he 
set out in a canoe with five Frenchmen and three 
Indians to go to their relief. But when he reached 
the village of the Caddo Indians, on Red river, all 
but one of his Frenchmen deserted him. He would 
still, however, have pushed on, had he not learned 



138 STORIES FliOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

that all in Fort St. Louis had been put to death. 
This was true. All were killed by the Indians, ex- 
cept two children and two men, who were saved by 
the Indian women and carried away captives. 



IBERVILLE, 



Nine years went by after the sorrowful ending of 
La Salle and of his colony in Texas, without any 
further attempt by the French to settle the mouth 
of the Mississippi. It almost seemed as if La Salle 
and his Mississippi and his great scheme of French 
domination in America, Avere forgotten both in Can- 
ada and in France. But the king of France had 
not forgotten. While La Salle and his colony were 
'struggling for life in Texas, King Louis was en- 
gaged in a great war in Europe. So soon as the 
peace of Kyswick was signed, which ended this war 
in 1697, he gave orders that an expedition should, 
be sent, at once, to the mouth of the Mississippi to 
carry out what La Salle had planned. Pierre Le 
Moyne Iberville was selected to lead this expedi- 
tion. 

No one in tlie king's service at tliat time sur- 



IBERVILLE. 139 

passed this young Canadian as a good seaman and a 
good fighter. He was born in Montreal in 16G1, and 
was the third son of Charles Le Moyne, and the 
most famous of nine brothers, who all gained fame 
in the service of France. 

Charles Le ^loyne, the father, was himself a noted 
man of that day. He was the son of a tavern- 
keeper of Dieppe, the great shipping town of Nor- 
mandy, in France. At the age of fifteen he sailed 
for Canada, and there by his quickness in learning 
the waj^s and the language of the different tribes of 
Indians, and his skill in trading, he made a large 
fortune, and became the owner of many valuable 
grants of land. One of these, an island opposite the 
city of Montreal, he named Longueuil, after the dis- 
trict in Normandy in which stood Dieppe, and when 
the king, to reward him for his good and successful 
service in Canada, raised him to the rank of a Can- 
adian noble, Charles Le Moyne took the title of the 
Sieur de Longueuil. As his sons grew to be men, 
he gave them lands, named for the places in Nor- 
mandy, and they, too, added them as titles to their 
names. Thus, Pierre Le Moyne was called d'lber- 
ville (of Iberville) ; and Jean Baptiste Le Moyne 
was de Bienville. In the course of time, they were 
known only as Iberville and Bienville. 

Before Iberville was fourteen, he had sailed so 



140 



STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 



often in a vessel of his father's, upon the St. 
Lawrence, from Quebec to Montreal, that he knew 
the river bv heart. At fourteen he was a midship- 



l^ 


^fek"" 


;>^-3^^^H 


^p '^^S^^^B ■■■: 




^^^^^^^^E •' "^'Sj , .^■*' - < "^^^B^HB^^^B 


"^■^^^H 


^^^^^^^kj<»?. - ^^''^H^^^^^H .J4 


t^l^^H 


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IBERVILLE. 



man, sailing between France and Canada, and he 
learned to handle a frigate and navigate the ocean' 
as perfectly as he knew how to handle river craft 



IBEKVILLI-:. 141 

and navigate the river. At twenty-five lie was a 
lieutenant, and Canada was ringing w^itli a daring 
exploit of his against the English in Hudson's Bay. 

Setting out with his men from Montreal, in the 
depth of winter, he marched over the frozen country 
to Hudson's Bay, in snowshoes, stopping to make 
canoes as they were needed to cross lakes and shoot 
rapids. Iberville's canoe upset in one of the most 
dangerous of these rapids, and two of his men were 
drowned, but his coolness and presence of mind 
saved his own life and the life of the other men 
with him. Reaching the English, his men stormed 
and captured a fort, Avhile he, with nine men in 
two canoes, surprised an English vessel lying at 
anchor, jumped on deck, killed the sentinel, fas- 
tened down the hatches, and made prisoners of all 
on board. 

He was now raised to the rank of captain 
and in his frigate swept the New England 
coast, capturing vessels and raiding settlements. 
Later he went, once more, against the English in 
Hudson's Bay, this time with a squadron of four 
ships. But Hudson's Bay was so blocked by ice- 
bergs, that the squadron was hemmed in for weeks. 
Iberville's ship made her way out first, and sailed 
alone towards the English, and meeting three of 
their ships, he sank one, captured another, and 



142 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

chased the third out of sight, before the rest of his 
squadron joined him. 

When, after this, he went to France, the Minister 
of Marine, Pontchartrain, sent for him and gave 
him the commission to lead an expedition to the 
mouth of the Mississippi river, and to take posses- 
sion of it ; to build a fort and make a settlement 
there. He was given four vessels ; two frigates, the 
''Badine'^ and the "Marin,'' and two transports of 
provisions. His young brother Bienville, who had 
been with him in Hudson's Bay, was enlisted for the 
new enterprise, as midshipman. 

While Iberville was in France, fitting out his ex- 
pedition, he heard that the English were also fitting 
out one for the mouth of the Mississippi. He hur- 
ried his preparations, determined to get to the goal 
first, or if he found the English there already, to 
drive them away. So, besides the crews of his ves- 
sels, he engaged a band of Canadians to go with 
him ; men as hardy as himself upon land and water, 
and as well trained as he in the fighting of English- 
men. 

On the 24th of October, 1698, he sailed from 
Brest, and brought his vessels safe to port in San 
Domingo. Here he was joined by the royal 
man-of-war, "Francois," whose captain, the Mar- 
quis de Chateaumorant, had been ordered to escort 
and protect him in the Gulf. 



IBERVILLE. 143 

Iberville heard, in San Domingo, that four 
English vessels had been sighted; sailing no one 
knew where. Guessing that they were his rivals on 
their way to the mouth of the Mississippi, he laid 
in, with all haste, the fresh supplies he needed, and 
sailed away. He had the good fortune to find on 
the island a noted filibuster captain, named Laurent 
de Graff, who knew the Gulf of Mexico and its 
coast well. He engaged him as a pilot, and he also 
engaged a band of filibusters to go with him. These 
filibusters were ''free hooters," as they were called ; 
seamen who went about in their own boats, preying 
upon the commerce of the gulf, fighting for or 
against anyone for the profit of the spoils. Some- 
times, when they had made their fortune they re- 
tired to peaceful homes and became good citizens, 
but sometimes, again, they became pirates or out- 
laws, and were run down and killed by all nations. 

On the evening of the twenty-third day after 
leaving San Domingo, Iberville's fleet came in sight 
of land, which throughout the night was lighted up 
by the red glare of burning prairies. The next morn- 
ing, a low line of white sand, with woods behind, 
was clearly seen. A barge was sent to row along 
the coast, while the ships followed in deep water. 
Just before nightfall of the second day's search, the 
barge signalled that it saw the mouth of a river, 



144 STORIES FROM LOUISLVNA HISTORY. 

with ships in it. Iberville feared it was the Missis- 
sippi, and that the vessels were English. He stopped 
his fleet. Then a fog fell and nothing more could be 
known. When it lifted, Iberville sent a party 
ashore. They found out that the bay was Santa 
Maria de Pensacola, and that the Spaniards were in 
possession of it. Iberville was relieved about the 
English, but he was greatly disgusted that he had 
not come a few months earlier, for the harbor of 
Pensacola was a fine one, and he could easily have 
taken possession of it for France. 

He sailed along until he came to Mobile Bay. 
Here again he hoped to find the Mississippi, but was 
again disappointed. A terrible storm, which lasted 
three days, broke upon him here. WhcM fair 
weather came, he set sail again and followed the 
curving line of the Gulf shore. Before him, tiny 
islands, like dots of white sand and green trees, 
came into view in the Northwest. As another storm 
was rising, he sent Bienville with a barge to look 
for shelter among them for the ships. But Bienville 
found none. More islands were seen in the North- 
west, and, nearer in the South, two flat, sandy ones. 
Iberville ran into these, and found shelter. It was 
Candlemas day, and the islands were called 
"Chandeleur," or Candlemas Islands. While the 
ships stayed here a day, Bienville was again sent 



IBERVILLli. 145 

out to look for a harbor among the little islands 
at the North, and a passage between them. At 
nightfall, he came back with the good news that this 
time he had been successful. At daylight, Iberville 
steered his ships through the pass, and cast anchor 
in the harbor of Ship Island, an easy shelter, he 
joyfully said, from every wind that blew. The live 
stock was landed ; the swine were put on the island 
near by, which the sailors called "Cat Island," 
taking the raccoons upon it for cats. 

On the shore, about twenty miles away, Iberville 
could see, with his spy glass, the figures of Indians 
moving about. He lost no time in sailing over there 
with Bienville and a crew of Canadians. Landing 
they followed the trail of the Indians, and came 
to where they could see canoes full of them, cross- 
ing betw^een a little island and the mainland — Deer 
Island and Biloxi, as we know them now. 

At sight of the white men the Indians, in terror, 
leaped from their canoes to the land, and ran into 
the woods. The Canadians tried to head them 
off, or stop them by friendly cries ; but the only one 
they caught was an old man, who had a dreadful 
sore on his leg and could not run. He was shiver- 
ing with cold and fear. The Canadians wrapped 
him in a blanket, kindled a fire to warm him, and 
gave him food and tobacco. In the meantime, Bien- 



146 STORIES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

ville and two Canadians, who had gone into the 
woods in chase of the Indians, came back with an 
old woman, whoi/i they had fonnd hiding. She, too, 
was frightened to death, thinking that her last hour 
had come. But she, too, was won by friendly signs 
and a present of enough tobacco for herself and 
her own family. She was taken to the old man, and 
the two were left together. 

As Iberville expected, that night the old woman 
slipped away, carrying her presents and her tale 
about the strangers to her people. As for the poor 
old man, during the night the grass around him 
caught fire, and he Avas badly burned. The Can- 
adians did what they could to ease his pain, but 
he died a short while afterwards. The effect of the 
old woman's talk and tobacco was soon seen, or 
rather heard, for the sound of Indians singing ap- 
proached nearer and nearer through the woods, and 
they came forward in a procession, bringing their 
calumet. Iberville received them with their own 
greeting; a gentle rubbing of the stomach; and 
taking them to their canoes, which tliey had jumped 
out of in such a hurry the day before, he showed 
them that the corn in them had not been touched. 
He feasted them on ^'sagamity," that is, pounded 
corn boiled with grease and bits of meat. And, 
other Indians coming out of the woods, all were 



IBERVILLE. 147 

soon smoking together like the best of friends. The 
next morning, however, when the Canadians looked 
for their good friends of the night before, they had 
nearly all slipped away, taking their canoes and 
corn with them. Only a few warriors were left. 
Iberville coaxed three of these to go with him on a 
visit to his ships. 

As the boats approached the ships, the chiefs 
stood up and chanted the peace song. Their recep- 
tion flattered them greatly. The cannon were fired 
off, and the ships put through their manoeuvers 
for them; and spy glasses were held to their eyes. 
This was the strangest wonder of all to them, that 
they could see so far off with one eye, and so near 
with the other, at the same time. They looked with 
curiosity at everything on the ^'floating houses,'' as 
they called the ships. They belonged, they said, 
to the Annochy and Biloxi tribes, who lived on the 
Pascagoula river, about three days' journey from 
the ships. Iberville asked them about the Missis- 
sippi, but they knew nothing about the river. When 
he took them back to the mainland, he found Bien- 
ville, who had been left on shore, making friends 
with a new set of Indians. These were, indeed, 
worth knowing. They were a chief and Avarriors 
of the Mongoulachas and Bayougoulas tribes, who 
lived on the banks of the Mississippi Itself. They 



148 STORIES FROM LOUISIAx\A HISTORY. 

were out on a hunt, but hearing the sound of the 
cannon, had hurried to the shore to find out what 
it was. Iberville gave them a lot of presents, one of 
which was a calumet or peace pipe, such as they 
had never seen before. It was made of iron, in the 
shape of a ship fl^'ing the lily banner of France. 
The evening was passed in great jollity; Canadians 
and Indians singing, dancing, and feasting around 
the campfire. 

In the morning the warriors left to go on with 
their hunt, but they promised to come back to the 
same spot in three days, to meet the French and 
guide them to a little stream that would take them 
into the Mississippi. They were to light a fire on 
shore as a signal, and Iberville was to answer by a 
cannon shot. Two da^'S later, the fire was seen on the 
shore, and Iberville fired his cannon, and with all 
haste sailed over to the spot. But not an Indian 
was to be seen. He returned disappointed to his 
ships, and the next day set about the discovery of 
the river by himself. He took with him a crew of 
Canadians, soldiers, and filibusters, in two barges, 
which were loaded with food for twenty-five days, 
and each armed with a small cannon, and carrying 
a canoe in tow. Iberville took command of 
one barge; Sauvole, his lieutenant, of the other. 
They sailed from the ships on Friday, the 



IBERVILLE. 149 

27th of Febriiarj, and steered South, Avhere 
groups of sandy islands could be seen. The weather 
was bad ; for the wind was blowing from the South- 
east, with rain. Running the length of the first 
island, that they came to, the boats entered the 
strange scene of the Mississippi Delta. Far as the 
men could see, islands small and great rose before 
them — some standing high and dr}^, some rippled 
over the slightest waves, and beyond, far out in the 
open, they could see the Chandeleur Islands, and 
they could hear, further away still, the roar of the 
breakers over other islands. No growth was 
seen except grasses and willows. The men worked 
with sail and oar to find a Ava^^ through the maze; 
but would get around one island only to find 
another in their wa^^ Well tired out at night, they 
camped on the nearest dry land they could find. 
They gathered oysters and ate them. . The only game 
they saw was wild cats — great red, furred animals. 
On Sunday such a furious storm broke over them 
that they could not leave their camp. The thunder 
roared as they had never heard it before ; the light- 
ning flashed fearfully; the rain came down in tor- 
rents; the wind changed to a freezing keenness. 
The water rose until it stood two inches over the 
highest part of their island, and the waves swept it 
from end to end. All day the men were cutting 



150 STOKIKS FROM LOUISIANA illSTORY. 

riislieo and piilng Ihciii up to sLiuJ cu, or bending, 
sliiveriug-, cycr tlic lire to keep Hie rain Trom putting 
it out. On Monday tliey were alle to make a start. 
They steered to keep tlie shore line in sight, so as 
not to pass any river that might be there. The wind 
rose to a gale, and the raging seas broke over and 
ovw their open boats. The canoes were taken up 
and shipped inside, and the men held their tar- 
paulin over the decks by main strength to keep 
the water from pouring in and swamping them. 
At one time they were running with the wind 
into the land, .fearing in the storm to pass the 
Mississippi by; at another they were fighting with 
the wind to keep off the land against which the sea 
was driving them. For three hours they battled 
to get around a rocky point, that rose as grim as 
death before them. Night was coming on. The fury 
of the gale showed no sign of lessening. Iberville 
saw that he must either perish at sea during the 
night, or be wrecked ashore. Seizing the one chance 
of daylight for himself and his men, he grasped the 
tiller, put the barge about, and with the wind full 
astern drove her on the rocks. But to his wonder,, 
as he neared them, the rocks opened out before him ; 
and through the opening he saw whitish muddy 
water gushing. He steered into it, tasted it, found 
it was fresh. The Mississippi was discovered! Th«i 



EXPLOICATION OF THE MISSISSITPI. 151 

grim-looking rocks were only driftwood, piled up 
in huge, fantastic shapes, and covered with mud, 
hardened by sun and wind. They looked, indeed, 
like the palissades that made the Spaniards call the 
river the Palissado. 

The boats entered the channel and went on until 
they came to a good camping place. Then landing 
and lighting their fires, they cooked their supper, 
and after eating it, threw themselves upon the 
rushes and enjoyed the rest they had earned. 

Iberville's Exploration of the Mississippi. 

The next morning, which was Mardi-Gras, the 
priests celebrated mass, and all chanted the Te 
Deum, and raised a cross to mark the spot. 
Then the boat pushed off from shore, and steered 
up the river. It still spread out ever wider and 
Avider before them until it looked like a great lake; 
and the explorers saw the other two passes branch- 
ing out towards the Gulf. Then it grew narrower 
again. After going about thirty miles, Iberville 
stopped for the night at a little bayou, which he 
named '^Mardi Gras." 

Henceforth, the low banks gradually began to 
rise, and instead of willows and grasses they bore 
oaks and magnolias and fine forests of splendid 
trees, and down the current came great masses of 



152 STORIES FliOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

drift; upturned trees, with their branches still 
green, dead and bare trunks, and leaves and trash, 
the washings out of low swamps. Bienville, pad- 
dling ahead in his canoe, would startle up flocks of 
ducks and sarcelles. Sometimes the tracks of deer 
on the banks would tempt the Canadians into a 
hunt; and great was the joy when they brought in 
game to add to the supper. Several alligators were 
killed and eaten, but not enjoyed. 

Every evening, when the camp was pitched, the 
cannon were fired off to attract the Indians there- 
about, and Iberville w^ould climb to the top of a tall 
tree, to spy out the new country about him. But no 
Indians were seen until the fifth day, when turning 
a bend, they came upon two in a pirogue. In a 
flash, they jumped into the woods and ran away. 
Further on, five more pirogues of Indians were 
seen ; and they took to the woods, also, in a panic. 
But, this time, Iberville was as quick as they, and 
chasing them through the woods, he caught up with 
one warrior, and got him to call his companions 
back, which he did by chanting a peace song. They 
belonged to the Annochy tribe, which, as we have 
seen, lived on the lake shore. They gladly traded 
their store of dried meat to the Frenchmen. One old 
Indian, spreading out his stock, and sitting behind 
it in market style, sold the whole of it — a hundred 



EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 153 

pounds — for two knives. These Indians knew the 
Bayougoulas, and sent a guide with Iberville to 
their village. As the Indians had not heard the 
cannon shot, Iberville had one fired off for their 
amusement. They threw themselves to the earth 
in a fit of fear and wonder, at the terrible thing. 

That night, Iberville camped close to the spot 
selected by Bienville, twenty years later, for the 
site of New Orleans. Nearby was a small deserted 
Indian village of about ten cabins, with straw roofs ; 
and on a point of the river bank was a fortified 
cabin, surrounded by a palissade, the height of a 
man. A few miles higher up, the guide took Iber- 
ville to the portage used by the Indians to cross be- 
tween the river and the lakes. Taking their 
pirogues out of the river, they had only to drag them 
over a short road to launch them in a bayou that 
flowed into the lake. The Indian, himself, went to 
the lake and came back to show how short a trip it 
was. This spot Iberville and Bienville never forgot. 
Iberville praised it in his report; and when Bien- 
ville came to found the City of New Orleans, he 
founded it here. 

The weather changed from great heat to great 
cold, but the only change in the river was, that it 
grew still more crooked, and its current still 
stronger. The rowers grumbled that they had to 



154 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

travel five miles to get ahead one ; and had to cross 
the river four times to get around a bend. When, one 
day, the rain kept them idle, some of the men went 
out hunting, and two of them Avere lost. The can- 
non was fired to guide them to the camp, and for 
two days Iberville kept the men in the woods hunt- 
ing for them, while the boats went up and down 
the river searching the banks. But it was all in 
vain. No trace of the lost men could be found, and 
the expedition had to go on without them. The 
next afternoon they passed a little river on the west 
bank. The guide called it the river of the Ouacha 
Indians. It is now supposed to be Bayou Lafoureiie. 
Some. miles beyond this, they met two large piro- 
gues filled with Ouacha and Bayougoula Indians. 
As soon as the Bayougoulas heard that the French 
were going to their village, they turned back to tell 
the news, so that a reception could be prepared. 

The next day when Iberville came in sight of the 
landing, a pirogue of Bayougoulas and Mon- 
goulachas came out to meet him, chanting their 
peace song and holding out a great calumet three 
feet long, decked with gay and bright feathers. As 
Iberville, Bienville and Sauvole stepped from the 
boat, they were gently taken under the arms by two 
warriors, and led to a cleared space, spread with 
mats and skins, where the chief sat in state, sur- 



EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 155 

rounded by his warriors. In the center of the meet- 
ing place, resting on two forked sticks, Iberville 
saw the pretty calumet he had given the Indians 
on the lake shore; the little ship flying the white 
banner of France, dotted with golden fleur-de-lis. 
It was guarded by a warrior, who never left it or 
took his eyes off it. 

The chief was a man of great dignity, who seemed 
to think it beneath his pride to notice the French- 
men. He sat staring fixedly before him all the time, 
and never laughed or smiled. But the most curious 
thing about him was a blue serge coat that he wore, 
a Frenchman's coat. Iberville eagerly asked him 
where he got it. He said it had been given him by 
the ^^Iron Hand," who had passed by the village 
going to the mouth of the river and coming back. 
The afternoon was spent in feasting, singing, and 
dancing, and at nightfall the Indians went, through 
the woods, to their village, about a mile distant, 
lighting their way by holding burning fagots of canes 
in their hands. The long line looked like a torch- 
light procession through the woods. The French 
visited the Bayougoula village the next morning. It 
was on the bank of a little bayou, surrounded by a 
palissade of cane ten feet high. Warriors met them 
at the gateway, and led them to the open space 
before the cabin of the chief. Here Iberville spread 



156 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY 

out the presents he had brought; a sight that daz- 
zled the eyes of the savages — a scarlet coat em- 
broidered in gold, scarlet hose, shirts, blankets, mir- 
rors, beads, hatchets, knives ! The Indians, in their 
turn, spread out their presents, the richest they 
could give — twelve large, dressed deer skins, and 
quantities of sagamity and cornbread. 

While the Indians were dividing their presents, 
Iberville walked through the village. In the center 
of it was a round temple, made of i^osts set upright 
in the ground, and plastered half their height with 
mud. The roof was like a pointed cap, made of 
split cane, neatly joined together; and it was 
painted Avith figures of birds and animals in red. 
Over the doorway was a portico eight feet deep. On 
one side were painted the same animals as on the 
roof ; but on the other side, all alone, was the picture 
of an opossum, the ugliest beast the Frenchmen 
had ever seen, and which they described as having 
a pig's head, a rat's tail, a badger's skin, and 
an open bag in its stomach. In the center 
of the temple, two great dried logs lay, slowdy 
burning wdth a fire, which, the Indians said, 
never died out. At the end, on a table, lay bundles 
of buffalo, deer, and bear skins, which had been 
offered to the '^opossum,'' the guardian spirit of 
the tribe. Iberville saw also on the table, a glass 
bottle that had been left in the village by Tonty, 



EXPLORATION OP THE MISSISSIPPI. 157 

The cabins were built like the temple, but 
without the portico; there was no floor in them 
but the earth, and no chimney but a hole in the 
pointed roof. The beds were made of branches, 
laid on frames raised two feet from the ground and 
covered with cane mats and skins. The men went 
naked, except on grand occasions, when they tied 
around their waists a kind of sash made of feathers 
strung together, weighted at the ends with bits of 
stone or metal, which jingled and tinkled gaily 
when they danced. The women wore red or white 
girdles of cloth, woven from the fibre of trees, edged 
with a fringe of cord that fell to the knee. They 
tattooed their faces, blackened their teeth, wore a 
great many bracelets, and twisted their hair up 
on the top of their heads. The dead, wrapped in 
cane mats, were laid on scaffolds, covered with lit- 
tle pointed roofs, which stood all around the village. 

When the Frenchmen went back to the landing 
place, the chief proudly escorted them, wearing the 
scarlet coat embroidered in gold. The Bayougqula 
chief went up the river with Iberville, eight of his 
tribe following in pirogues. As they rowed along, 
he pointed out to Iberville a little stream on the 
right hand side of the river, and said it was called 
the Ascantia, and that it flowed into the lake where 
the ships were. Some miles further on they came to 



158 STOUIKS FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the dividing line between the hunting grounds of 
the Houmas and the Bayougoulas, a little river 
which was noted among the Indians for its fish. 
Here Iberville saw a tall, straight post, painted red 
and hung, by the Indian hunters, with offerings of 
fish and game. The French called it the "Baton 
Rouge," and thus the spot that has become the 
capital of Louisiana, received its name . 

The boats then went past the first island met in 
the river. About five or six miles above the island, 
the bank on the right rose in a bluff fifty feet high ; 
the other bank being as flat as ever. A few miles fur- 
ther on the Bayougoula chief pointed out to Iber- 
ville a little bayou, not six feet wide, and said if the 
barges could only get through it, a whole day's jour- 
ney would be cut off. Iberville stopped at once, and 
put the Canadians to work. A huge pile of drift 
was cut away, and the bayou was cleared of logs 
and deepened in shallow places. Then the boats 
were unloaded, and were slowly pulled through the 
bayou by pulleys rigged to the trees, while the lug- 
gage was carried along on the bank. It was rain- 
ing, and the trampled ground soon became a mire in 
which the men could hardly keep their feet; but 
they were so eager to knock off a day from their 
rowing, that th^y never stopped until 9 o'clock that 
night, when, by the blazing light of cane torches, the 



EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 159 

barges came through the little bayou into the great 
river again, just eighteen miles from where they 
had left it. Thus was made Pointe Couple, and 
this "cut off" of Iberville's was in course of 
time taken by the river itself, which left its old 
channel for it. 

The next day the explorers came to the Houma 
village. As the cannon had been fired off to let the 
Indians know they were coming, they found the 
Houmas at the landing place waiting to receive 
them, with a calumet and singing the peace song. 
After the smoking and the speech-making were over, 
the Houmas asked the strangers to go to their vil- 
lage. Like the Bayougoulas-, it was not on the river 
bank, but back in the woods. Iberville, Sauvole, and 
Bienville, with some of the Canadians, set out at 
once for it, following the Indians, who, chanting 
their peace songs all the way, led them through 
swamps and cane-brakes, and up and down hills, at 
such a pace, that the heavily clad white men found 
it hard to keep up. At some distance from the vil- 
lage, another party of Indians was waiting to re- 
ceive them with a calumet, which had to be 
smoked. Iberville complained a great deal of all 
the smoking he had to do; for as he had not the 
habit of it, it made him sick. And again the visitors 
were halted on a little hill, just outside the village, 



160 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

until the chief was told that they were there. Then 
they were allowed to enter the village, the warriors 
in front still singing, those behind carrying the 
calumets, and the Frenchmen following. The chief 
received them kindly, and Iberville gave him his 
presents. After each gift, all of the warriors would 
rise and, stretching their arms out, w^ould give a 
long cry of "Hou ! Hou ! " a kind of howl of thanks. 
All the afternoon the eating and the smoking 
were not allowed to stop a moment. And besides, 
there was given what the Frenchmen called a regu- 
lar ball. Singers, placing themselves one one side of 
the open space, raised their voices in music, beating 
time with gourd rattles. Thirty-five young girls 
and young men then bounded from behind the trees 
into the circle, with their fringe girdles and feather 
sashes tinkling and flying in the air. Their faces 
shone with fresh paint, and the young girls had 
bouquets of birds' feathers in their braided hair, 
and in their hands held long branches of different 
colored feathers, which they used as fans to beat 
time with. For three hours, they kept up the danc- 
ing. When night came, all went to the cabin of the 
chief, where after supper, by the light of a cane 
torch fifteen feet long and two feet thick, the young 
warriors danced a war dance, with their bows and 
arrows, knives and tomahawks. At midnight the 



EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 161 

Frenchmen retired to their couches, but not to 
sleep, for the two chiefs, the Houma and the 
Bayougoula, began to make speeches to one another, 
and kept this up till daylight. 

The Houma village was about the same size as 
the Bayougoula. Its cabins were built in a double 
row around the top of a hill, with an open space in 
the center. Their cornfields lay in the surrounding 
valleys, the soil of which was black, strong, and 
rich. 

The Houmas told Iberville that Tonty had passed 
five days in their village, when he went down to the 
mouth of the river in search of La Salle ; and they 
said, also, what the Bayougoulas had not told him, 
that Tonty had left a written paper with the Bayou- 
goula Indians to give to a man ^^who was to come 
up the river from the sea.'' This paper was, of 
course, meant for La Salle. 

Iberville left the Houma village, with the inten- 
tion of going still further up the Mississippi, but 
when he stopped at mid-day for dinner, he came to 
the conclusion, that as his men were tired with 
rowing, and his food had given out, a further jour- 
ney was unwise and useless. So he gave orders, 
and the boats were turned around. Rowing now 
down stream and towards their ships and good fare, 
and away from Indian food and cornmeal, the men 



162 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

easily put mile after mile behind them, and brought 
the barges quickly to the Ascantia. Iberville de- 
cided to go through it to the Gulf. Leaving the ex- 
pedition in command of Sauvole, and charging 
Bienville to get the letter written by Tonty from the 
Bayougoula village, he, with an Indian guide and 
four Canadians pushed his way through the tangled 
opening of the little bayou, which was henceforth 
called Bayou Iberville. It was only about ten feet 
wide and three or four deep, and so choked up 
that it was hard to get even a pirogue through it. 
The first day, they went twenty-one miles, and car- 
ried the canoes fifty-times over or around fallen 
trees. On the second day, the Indian guide de- 
serted ; but Iberville went on without him. Then one 
of the Canadians fell* ill, and Iberville had to take 
his place in paddling the pirogue and in carrying it. 
He noted with delight the beautiful country through 
which the little bayou fiowed ; it was the finest, he 
wrote to France, he had ever seen ; the soil was rich ; 
the forests fine; there were no cane-brakes. The 
bayou was filled with fish, but there were so many 
alligators in it, that he seemed at times to be pad- 
dling through a mass of them. He heard numbers 
of wild turkeys, but he did not see any. After leav- 
ing the bayou, they came to a beautiful little lake, 
which Iberville named "Maurepas," after the son of 
the Duke of Pontchartrain. 



EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSII'PI. 163 

The second and larger lake he named Pontchar- 
train, after the duke himself. Camping at night 
on the low grassy points or islands around 
the lakes, he made the acquaintance of the 
mosquitoes; ''terrible little animals to men in 
need of rest," he calls them. As he paddled from 
twenty to thirty miles a day, he soon came to the 
shore opposite Ship Island. He crossed to it, and 
mounted the deck of the "Badine," just one month 
after he had started on his expedition. 

Eight hours later, Sauvole and Bienville were 
seen speeding their way over the Gulf to the ships. 
Bienville brought to Iberville the letter written by 
Tonty; he had bought it for a hatchet. It was 
addressed to ''M. de La Salle, Governor General 
of Louisiana." In it, Tonty wrote how he had gone 
down the river to help La Salle; but had not found 
him, although he had explored for twenty miles 
around the mouth of the river. Bienville brought, 
also, a little Indian boy, whom he had bought 
for a gun ; but, best of all, he brought back the two 
men who were lost going up the river. They had 
been found by Indians, and taken to the Bayou- 
goulas' village ; the Indians promising them that if 
the French did not pass back that way, they would 
take them to the ships in the lake. 



16tt stories from louisiana history. 

The First Capital. 

Iberville had intended making his settlement at 
the mouth of the river, as La Salle had planned. 
But now with time and provisions running short, 
he saw he must choose a spot nearer to Ship Island 
and to his vessels. He decided upon the snug little 
harbor of Biloxi Bay, with Deer Island lying in 
front of it, like a cloak against the storm winds of 
the Gulf. On its eastern shore was a high bank, 
which seemed made by nature for a fort, for guns 
upon it would sweep the horizon east, west, and 
south. 

Work was begun there at once. Trees were cut, 
a space cleared, and the fort laid out. The site of 
it may be seen today.* The trees were of such great 
size and of such hard woods, mostly oak and nut, 
that the men sometimes took a day to cut one down, 
and a forge had to be set up to mend the axes that 
were constantly broken upon them. The barges 
and small boats were kept busy, plying between 
the ships and the shore, fetching over the supplies, 
tools, implements, provisions, arms, ammunition, 
and the bands of workmen drawn from the crews 
of the ships. 

In six weeks enough of the fort was finished for 
Iberville to leave. He sailed back to France, put- 

* It is the site of the present town of Ocean Spi'ings, in Mississippi, 



THE FIRST CAPITAL. 165 

ting Sauvole in command and Bienville second in 
command under him. Sauvole vigorously carried 
on the work left him to do. He finished the fort, 
kept up discipline among his men, and made friends 
with Indian neighbors. Almost every week brought 
a visit from some of them curious to see the fort. 
The first to arrive was our old acquaintance, the 
Bayougoula chief, with a party of his warriors. 
They were received with a salute of guns, which ter- 
rified them greatl}^; but the presents comforted 
them ; particularly the shirts, which, to their huge 
delight, were fitted on them. They looked with great 
surprise at the fort, wondering how the French 
could get together and pile up such a number of 
great logs in so short a space of time. All went well 
until at night, when the sentinels came to get the 
watch-word from the sergeant. The whispering 
threw the Indians into a fear of treachery, out of 
which Sauvole had to soothe and coax them. At day- 
light the warriors said that their wives were on the 
other side of the bay, and that they, also, would 
like to see the fort. The savage dames were at once 
sent for. When they landed, the chief, anxious that 
the show should be equal to what they expected, 
made signs to Sauvole to put his men under arms, 
and went himself to hunt up the drummer. When 
'the visit ended, Sauvole sent two French boys along 



166 ' STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

with the Indians to learn their language, while he 
kept an Indian boy with him to learn French. 

About the first of July, two pirogues paddled 
across the bay to the fort, filled, not with Indians 
as Sauvole, expected, but with white men. They 
were some Canadians and two priests, who had 
come all the way down from their missions among 
the Tensas and Tunicas Indians, to see the settle- 
ment of the French at the mouth of the river, which 
the Indians had told them about. They were w^orn 
out with toil and thirst; for their drinking water 
had given out, and during the ten days it had taken 
them to make their way from the mouth of the river 
to Biloxi, they would have died of thirst, they said, 
if they had not had a rain. 

Bienville Visits The Indians. 

In the meantime Bienville was learning some- 
thing of the country and of the Indians living in 
it. He visited the Quinipissas, who lived on the 
shore of Lake Maurepas, and went to the villages 
of the Moctobys, Biloxis, and Pascagoulas along the 
Pascagoula river. In the three villages there were 
not more than a hundred warriors with their 
families. A part of them came afterwards to the 
fort, bringing their calumet and a present of deer 
skins. Sauvole said that they were the most polite 
savages he had seen. 



BIENVILLE VISITS THE INDIANS. 167 

From Pascagoula river, Bienville went to Mobile 
Bay, which he again explored and sounded, and 
he marched by land to Pensacola and made an 
inspection of that place. When he came back, after 
a short stay at Biloxi, he set out again, with two 
pirogues of Canadians and Indians, to go over the 
route followed by Iberville from the river, and to 
explore Bayou Ouacha. In three days he reached 
the Iberville bayou, and in a week was at the Bayou- 
goula village, where he got a guide, and paddled to 
the Ouacha village, which lay a mile or so in the 
woods. But he met here Indians of a different tem- 
per from any he had come across before. So fierce 
and war-like were they, that he was very glad to get 
safely away from them, and back to his pirogues, 
and into the Mississippi again. He was paddling 
his way rapidly along, when turning a bend about 
seventy-five miles above the mouth, he was stopped 
by a sight that startled him. A sloop of war lay 
anchored in mid-stream before him. He sent his 
companion pirogue forward to speak the vessel. It 
proved to be English. Bienville then paddled for- 
word in his pirogue and went aboard. The captain 
was named Banks, and he turned out to be one of 
Iberville's old Hudson Bay prisoners, and so an 
acquaintance of Bienville. He said he was in 
search of the Mississippi and his vessel was one of 



J()S STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

three that had sailed from London, loaded with 
emigrants, to make a settlement upon the banks of 
the Mississij^pi. 

This was the expedition Iberville had heard 
about, and for which he had been on the lookout. It 
had sailed from England in October, almost at the 
same date that Iberville had sailed from France; 
but had passed the winter in Carolina, where most 
of the colonists, pleased with the climate, had 
chosen to remain. One ship had gone back to Eng- 
land, leaving the other two to find the river. Cap- 
tain Banks had cruised for a hundred miles round 
about, and finding this large stream, he had sailed 
into it. As it was the only large river on the coast, 
he said he was sure it was the Mississippi. Bien- 
ville, however, proved to the Englishman that the 
river, and all the country round about, now be- 
longed to the King of France, who had force enough 
at hand to protect his rights ; and he had the satis- 
faction of seeing the captain raise his anchor, and 
head his sloop down stream. The bend in the river, 
where this took place, is still called English Turn, 
in memory of the event. 

The Summer of 1700 came to an end, and winter 
drew on. At Biloxi, Christmas and New Year's 
day passed ; and the impatience of the colonists for 
Iberville's ships to return grew with the hours. At 



BlENVlLLE VISITS THE INDIAN^. 169 

last, on the eve of Twelfth Night, the boom of a 
cannon at Ship Island told the good news to the 
waiting ears. Sauvole hastened over to the island, 
and brought Iberville back to the fort, where he 
was received with salutes from the guns and joyful 
cries from his men. He came, indeed, like a 
belated Santa Claus to the little settlement. For 
Sauvole and Bienville he brought royal commis- 
sions; for the colony, money, provisions, and more 
men ; sixty Canadians among them, who had served 
with him in Hudson's Bay. His seventeen-year 
old brother, Chateauguay, the youngest of the Le 
Moyne brothers, came with him; and the famous 
Juchereau de St. Denis, who later founded the town 
of Natchitoches. 

Iberville stayed only long enough at Biloxi to 
get an expedition ready to build a fort on the Mis- 
sissippi, which the visit of the English captain 
showed him was needed there. The place he selected 
was on the left bank* of the river, about fifty-four 
miles from the mouth. Here he built a strong log 
house, which he called Fort Maurepas. 

About the middle of February, while the clear- 
ing, cutting, and building were busily going on, a 
pirogue of Canadians came down the river, and 
stopped at the landin g. Iberville greeted the leader 

* The left bank always means the bank on the left of a person de- 
scending the river. 



170 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

heartily; for he was Henri de Tontv, the true and 
loyal friend of La Salle. 

He had heard of the settlement, and had come to 
offer his services. Iberville gladly accepted them 
for an expedition he wished to make into the Red 
River country. They got ready and set out at once. 
At the Bayougoula village, they met some Tensas 
Indians. As they were the Indians who, the year 
before, had told Iberville about Red River and 
the tribes living there, Iberville tried to get a guide 
from them, but they said Red River was filled with 
logs, and the only way they could guide him, was by 
land through the big Tensas village, above Natchez. 
So the pirogues were all set in motion up the ^lissis- 
sippi towards the Natchez and the Tensas. At the 
Natchez landing, a messenger was sent to tell the 
chief they were there. The chief responded by 
sending his brother, escorted by twenty-five men, 
with a calumet of peace and an invitation to visit 
the village. 

Climbing to the top of the steep Natchez bluff, 
covered with magnificent forest trees, Iberville 
looked with joy upon a beautiful landscape of 
meadows and hills, dotted with groves of trees, 
and crossed with roads leading from village to 
village and from cabin to cabin. Half way to the 
village, the chief was met, ceremoniously advancing 



BIENVILLE VISITS THE INDIANS. 171 

with his body guard, twenty large, handsome men. 
He himself was rather a small and slight man, 
about five feet three or four inches high, but with a 
very intelligent face. 

The village was handsomer and better than any 
yet seen among the Indians. The cabin of the chief 
stood on a mound ten feet high. Facing it was the 
temple ; around stood the cabins, enclosing a hand- 
some open space. A small running stream nearby 
furnished water to the village. The Natchez were 
the most civilized of all the southern Indians. They 
worshipped the sun, and their chief was called the 
Great Sun. He never worked. His servants were 
taken from the most noted families in the tribe; 
and when he died, they were strangled so as to fol- 
low him into the next world. When an infant chief 
was born, each family that had a newborn infant 
brought it to the chief; and a certain number were 
chosen as servants for him, and if the baby chief 
died, all of these were strangled. 

The Natchez spoke a different language from any 
of the other Indians, but Bienville picked up enough 
words of it to talk with them, as he talked with the 
Bayougoulas, Houmas, and Choctaws. After leav- 
ing the Natchez, Iberville with his party travelled 
up to the Tensas landing, and went on foot through 
the woods to Lake Tensas, where they found piro- 



17 tl STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

gues for the rest of the way. The Tensas village 
stood on the shore of the lake; it had once been the 
home of a numerous and powerful tribe, but now it 
was thinned out by sickness. The French were 
well received, but during the night they saw such 
an act of barbarity as turned their hearts from the 
tribe. 

A terrific storm broke out, and lightning striking 
the temple, set it on fire, and in a few minutes it 
was burned. The Indian priest thought the disaster 
was caused by the wrath of their god. Standing by 
the flames, he called out in loud commands: 
^'Women, bring your children and offer them a sac- 
rifice to the Great Spirit to pacify Him.'' Five 
women came forward and five infants were thrown 
into the heart of the flames. The priest then led the 
unnatural motliers in triumph to the cabin of the 
chief, where all the village came to praise and 
caress and do them honor. 

A painful trouble in his knee, which prevented 
Iberville from walking, put an end to his going on 
with the Red Kiver exploration. He turned over 
the command of it to Bienville, and after seeing 
him start off, journeyed back to Fort Maurepas. 
There he fell very ill of a fever. 

It was early in March, when Bienville with his 
party set off, an<l the rising streams were begin- 



BIENVILLE'S JOURNAL. 173 

ning to overflow the country. As they had no pi- 
rogues, they crossed the streams on foot logs; but 
most of the time they swam or waded across, push- 
ing their clothes before them on rafts; always fir- 
ing off their guns first, to scare away the alligators. 
But Bienville kept a journal, and we can read about 
it all in his own words. 

BiENViLLE^s Journal. 

"On the 22d of March, I left the village at nine 
o'clock in the morning, with twenty-two Canadians, 
six Tensas, and one Ouachita. I marched all day 
in an overflowed country, the water half way up the 
leg. In the evening I arrived at the bank of a little 
river, about seventy paces wide and very deep. I 
found there some Ouachitas, with sveral pirogues 
loaded with salt. They were abandoning their vil- 
lage to go and live with the Tensas. 

"24:th. We set out at sunrise, the weather 

pretty cold Came to two little rivers, which 

we crossed on trees that we threw over from one 
side to the other. . . .We came to a beautiful dry 
prairie. . . .at the end of which was a river about 
forty paces wide, with a strong current and full of 
crocodiles. We crossed it with rafts. 

"25th. Walked all day through woods and prair- 
ies, in water to the knees, waist, and sometimes to 



174 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the ueck. A man of middle height is at great dis- 
advantage in such countries. I see some of my 
men with the water only up to their waists, while I 
and others are swimming, pushing our bundles 
before us on rafts, to keep them from getting wet. 

^'28th, Sunday. Swam across a swamp five hun- 
dred paces broad, and Avalked over several prairies 
separated by strips of forest, and came to the vil- 
lage of the Ouachitas. This village is on the banks 

of Bed River, or rather on a branch of it The 

river in this place may be one hundred and eighty 
paces wide, and with as much current as the Mis- 
sissippi It rained all day. 

^'29th. Rained until mid-day, when I set out with 
a Natchitoches to guide me to his village. We 
crossed a river very broad and rather deep. From 
there we fell into a wet country. We came to two 
little rivers, very rapid, which we had to swim 
across; the water in them was very cold. From 
there we went into a swamp, at the end of which 
we met six Natchitoches, who were going to the 
Coroas to sell salt. 

"April 1st. Rained in torrents all night, and 
this morning until 10 o'clock. . . .We crossed eight 
little rivers from ten to twelve paces wide, and 
very deep; we cut down trees for bridges; after 
which we came to several swamps and sloughs, in 



BIENVILLE'S JOURNAL. 175 

which the water came up to the waist and arm-pits. 
We walked until night without being able to find, 
in all that time, a camping ground. 

"2d. Rained all night and until two o'clock in 
the day. We were only able to make four miles 
to-day, because of the bad roads through the swamp ; 
the water was as high as the waist, at least. We 
came to six little rivers, which we had to cross on 
trees, at least two feet under the water. The cane 
grows so thick in this country that we had to force 
our way through. 

"5th. A half league from our camp we came to a 
swamp, a quarter of a league wide, where there was 
no bottom at six feet, and which was filled with 
wood, out of which we made rafts to carry our 
clothes. We were all day in crossing it. The water 
was very cold, and several of my men were so 
chilled that they had to climb trees and stay there 
to recover. Four passed nearly the whole day up in 
them, until rafts were sent to fetch them away. My 
men and I were never so tired in our lives. But 
we never stopped singing and laughing to show 
our guides that fatigue does not trouble us, and that 
w^e are different men from the Spaniards. 

"14th. Came to a swamp, very deep; but our 
guides said that, a few miles to the south, there 
were three cabins on the bank of a river, where we 



176 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

should find pirogues. I put my men immediately to 
hollowing out a pirogue with our tomahawks. It 
was finished in five hours, large enough to hold six 
men, whom I sent to hunt for the Indian cabins 
and the pirogues. My other men went hunting and 
killed six deer. 

''15th. My men returned, bringing me three 
pirogues, in which we embarked. 

"16th. Left our pirogues and marched the length 
of the lake on a ridge of fine countr^^ and forest, 
where, walking along, we killed five deer. We fired 
several shots to notify the Indians on the other 
side of a lake a league away, in the west-south- 
west. Five men came in a pirogue to see who we 
were. Our guide called them and made them come 
to us. I went to their village, which was over- 
flowed. 

''17th. I set out in two pirogues to go to the 
Yataches, cutting across the woods the shortest 
way, the river having overflowed the country all 
around. Night overtook us opposite a little village 
of the Nakasas, on the left bank of Red river, where 
we slept. 

"20th. We followed the river, which makes sev- 
eral bends arrived at the village of the 

Yataches The Indians, having heard from an 

Indian who arrived a little before us, that we 



CHANGE OP CAPITAL. 177 

wished provisions and pirogues, had hidden their 
corn and pirogues. I threatened them if they did 
not provide us with them, that I should remain 
there. From here to the Caddodaquious, they cal- 
culate it as only a two days' journey in summer. 

"22nd. Embarked for the Caddodaquious, who 
are northwest from here. Although the Indians tell 
me it will take ten days and ten nights to get there 
by the river, I cannot believe it, as it is only two 
days' journey by land, on which I cannot travel, on 
account of the high water ; but being once started, 
the guides, seeing me determined to go there, will, 
as they have done in several places, tell me the 
truth about the distance." 

Bienville found, however, that the guides were 
telling the truth, and that to get to the land of the 
Caddodaquious would take more time than Iber- 
ville had allowed him. So he turned back, and 
reached the ships in the Gulf the middle of May. 
Ten days later Iberville sailed for France, leaving 
his young brother in command of the new fort on 
the Mississippi. 

Change op Capital. 

Fort Maurepas, with its fields of corn and vege- 
tables, soon formed a bright spot on the wild and 
savage banks of the great river. Canadian hunters 



178 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

found out the way there from the far distant North 
and West. Every now and then, bands of them 
would come paddling up to the landing in pirogues, 
almost sinking under their loads of game, skins, 
dried meat, and bears' grease; and the quiet little 
landing would break into noisy laughter, singing, 
dancing, and frolicking. Sometimes, a solitary 
canoe would glide down the river to the landing, 
bringing a black-gowned priest — a missionary from 
some little post among the Indians far up the river, 
who came to greet his countrymen and get news 
from France. It is true the place overflowed in 
high water, and the black snakes — <so it was be- 
lieved — ate up all the vegetables at the root, and 
food was scarce ; and there were such quantities of 
mosquitoes, that at times the air was dark with 
them, and they bit furiously; but the young Can- 
adian, Bienville, had been brought up in a school 
that taught him, as we have seen in his Ked River 
trip, to make light of hardships. 

The young French lieutenant, Sauvole, at Biloxi, 
was not so well fitted for the trials of his command. 
He found the Canadians under him unruly. They 
liked no work but hunting and fighting; and they 
were given to drinking, saving up their daily 
rations of spirits until they got enough to make 
them drunk. Then there were so many Indians 



CHANGE OF CAPITAL. 179 

coming to the settlement all the time, that Sauvole 
was hard pressed to give them food and the presents 
they expected, and without which they would get 
offended and turn into enemies. And in addition 
to them great pirogues of Canadians, who went 
down to Fort Maurepas, would also come to Biloxi, 
and they would stay there frolicking and eating 
until Sauvole had to ask them to leave. The sun 
was so hot that the men could work only two hours 
in a day. There was a drought that killed all the 
vegetables and dried up all the springs, and even 
the swamps. The only drinking water for the fort 
cam-e from a spring several miles away. After this 
came a season of great rain. Food grew so scarce 
that there would have been a famine, if Iberville 
had not sent a transport of provisions from San 
Domingo. Alligators crawled around the fort, and 
rattlesnakes abounded. Fever broke out, and the 
soldiers and Canadians died fast of it. Sauvole 
struggled along bravely, doing what he could to 
keep up order, and supply the needs that pressed 
upon him on all sides. But he, too, was stricken 
with the fever, and died of it in August, 1701. At 
the news of his death, Bienville hastened over from 
Fort Maurepas, and took command in Biloxi. 

Iberville, who was due in March, with the ships 
of supplies, did not get to the colony until Decem- 



180 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

ber; and then lie came no further than Pensacola; 
for he was suffering greatly from an abscess in the 
side, and was unable to rise from his bed. This 
time he brought another brother to Louisiana — 
Joseph Le Movne, the Sieur de Serignj^, who, also, 
was a seaman of great reputation. 

When Iberville made his report to his govern- 
ment in France, he showed what an advantage it 
would be to France to have Pensacola, a harbor 
directly on the Gulf, and much easier than Biloxi 
for the ships to get into ; and an effort was made to 
get Spain to cede Pensacola to France^ but Spain 
refused. Iberville, therefore, in order to have a 
harbor on the Gulf, made up his mind to take pos- 
session of Mobile Bay, and build a fort and make 
a settlement there. From Pensacola he sent orders 
to Bienville to move the colony at once to Mobile 
Bay, and to build a fort on the right bank of the 
river, about fifty miles above its mouth. 

The work of moving was begun at once and 
pushed forward with all the strength of the 
men. De Serigny brought over from Pensacola 
his ship laden wtih supplies for the colony, and 
with all the small boats and men that could be 
spared from Iberville's ship. Tents were put up on 
Dauphine Island to store the freight in until flat- 
boats could 1)0 built to take it across the bay and 



CHANGE OF CAPITAL. 181 

up the river, where the fort was being put up. As 
soon as Iberville was well enough to come from 
Pensacola he took charge of the work, and sent 
Bienville into the country to make friends with 
the Indian tribes about there. Bienville found, on 
the river above the fort, the Mobile Indians, the 
descendants of the fierce warriors who had given 
De Soto so bloody a reception at INIauvilla. Above 
the Mobiles lived the Tohomes, a small, but indus- 
trious tribe, whose corn crops fed the French gar- 
rison at Fort Louis through many a season of 
hunger. On the Alabama river were the Ala- 
bammas,* a warlike tribe, always fighting against 
their neighbors. Between the Tombigbee and the 
Mississippi lay the land of the Choctaws, the most 
pow^erful tribe of that region. North of the Choc- 
taws lay the Chickasaws, the worst foes that the 
French met among the Indians. Tonty went to 
these great tribes and came back, bringing with 
him their chiefs, who were received by Iberville in 
such a grand way, and were given so man^^ presents, 
that they smoked all the calumets and made all the 
treaties that he wished. So when Iberville sailed 
to France, in March, he had the satisfaction not 
only of leaving behind him a fine, large, well-built 
fort, but of knowing it was in a country of friendly 
Indians. 

*The old spelling of this tribal name. 



182 STOKIKS FROM LUUISIAXA HISTORY. 

Louisiana never saw the gallant Iberville aaain. 
He died four years later of yellow fever in Havana, 
where he stopped to enlist men to go on an expedi- 
tion with him against the English possessions on 
the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf. For as he had 
fought the English in Hudson's Bay, so now he had 
determined to fiiiht them in these southern waters. 



BIENVILLE. 



Jean Baptiste Le ^loyne, the Sieur de Bienville, 
was the eighth son of Charles Le Moyne. He was 
born in Montreal on the 23d of February, 1680. His 
father died when he was five years old, and his 
mother, when he was ten; so that he was taken in 
charge by his eldest brother, Charles, the Baron de 
Longueuil, who lived in the Chateau de Longueuil. 
This chateau was the wonder and admiration of all 
the country around. It was built after the manner 
of the chateaux in France; and with its thick walls 
of brick and masonry, its towers, guard-rooms, and 
barracks, its church, its farms, stables, sheepfolds 
and dovecotes, it was the handsomest and stateliest 
residence in Canada. 



niENVILLB. 183 

The Baron de Longueuil had been sent to France 
in his youth and had served as page to a marshal 
of France; and had gone to court and married the 
daughter of a nobleman there; and he not only lived 
as a nobleman of France, but he had the manners, 
language, and appearance of one. At the same time 
he had the character and qualities of his worthy 
father, the pioneer ; and for them was held in honor 
and esteem by his fellow Canadians. 

The young Bienville, therefore, learned in these 
surroundings, not only the graces, but the solid 
virtues of life. Following the example of his elder 
brothers, Iberville and Serigny, he chose the sea as 
a career, and like them, by the time he was ready to 
embark upon it, he had learned all that was to be 
learned on land, in the forest, and on the St. 
Lawrence. He was a perfect canoeist and woods- 
man, and although only a boy at the time, he went 
to Hudson's Bay with Iberville, and took part in 
all the dangers from ice, water, and gunshots, that 
we have told about. At the end of this expedition, 
he went with Iberville to France, and sailed with 
him on the Badine for the discovery of the mouth 
of the Mississippi. As we have seen, he was fore- 
most in every exploration sent out by Iberville — in 
Pensacola, in Mobile, in looking for a harbor among 
the islands^ and finally in the finding of the mouth 



184 STOEIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 




BIENVILLE. 

of the Mississippi. On the first exploration of the 
river, he always paddled ahead of the boats in his 
pirogue ; and, indeed, he was the scout and the meg- 



BIENVILLE, 185 

senger, always ready for and always capable of any 
undertaking. 

He was gentle and reserved in disposition, but he 
had a firm will and a courage that could not be 
quelled, even in early youth. He knew how to gain 
a strong influence over his friends and the men 
under his command. The Canadians were ever 
devoted to him, and would follow him through any 
danger. The Indians of Louisiana learned to love 
and respect him. They called him ^'father." In his 
dealings with them, he was ever fair and just. He 
never broke his word to them, nor forgot a promise. 
When with them, he alwa^^s followed their customs 
and manners, and could talk to each tribe in its 
own language. As, in Canada, he had learned the 
language of the Indians there, so, in Louisiana, he 
learned the language of every tribe that he had 
dealings with. He was but twenty-two, when Iber- 
ville put him in command of the colony, and 
charged him to hold the mouth of the Mississippi 
for France, to keep the Spaniards of Pensacola in 
check, and to be on his guard against the English, 
and to keep the Indians in peace and friendship 
w^ith one another and with himself. 

It was not a small task, but the young Canadian 
did not fail in it. The war that had broken out in 
Europe, between England and France, made itself 



186 STORIKS FROM L(3UISIANA HISTORY. 

felt in America. Bienville was hardly at home in 
Fort Louis de la Mobile, when Indian war parties, 
armed and sent out by the English in Carolina, be- 
gan to raid the cornfields and burn the villages of 
the Indians, w^ho were friends and allies of the 
French; and an English fleet, sailing about in the 
Gulf, kept Mobile in constant fear of an attack. 
English traders turned the Indians upon the Mis- 
sissippi against the French ; and the humble pious 
missionaries and their little flocks were always the 
first victims; and pirogues would come speeding 
over the bay to Fort Louis de la Mobile, bearing 
the news of assassination and murder, and bringing 
a load of wounded praying for help and medicine. 
So Father Davion came, fleeing from the Tunicas, 
and he told of the murder of an old priest, by the 
Coroas, as he and his attendants were peacefully 
coming down the river to visit Mobile. And so 
came Father Gravier, from the Illinois, with his 
arm wounded by five arrow shots. And closer to 
the fort the Alabamma Indians killed five French- 
men, who had gone to their village to buy corn. 
Bienville armed the Arkansas Indians against 
the Coroas to punish them for killing the priest; 
and he himself made an expedition against the 
Alabammas. Then war broke out between the 
Chickasaws and Choctaws ; and Bienville's hope of 



BIENVILLE. 187 

keeping these two powerful tribes as friends died 
away, He held the Choctaws true to the French; 
but the Chickasaws went over to the English. 

For two summers ships came from France, bring- 
ing all the supplies that a growing colony needed ; 
emigrants, money, cattle, provisions, missionaries, 
and young girls to be married to good and thrift}^ 
young men ; and all seemed to bid fair for the hap- 
piness and prosperity of Fort Louis. But one of 
the ships, touching at Havana for live stock, 
brought the yellow fever into the colony and for a 
time it raged pitilessly. Priests, sailors, soldiers, 
and the new emigrants sickened and died, and the 
place was almost depopulated. But the greatest 
loss and the most sorrowful death of all was that 
of the brave and loyal Tonty. 

After this, for three years, no ships came from 
France, and the colony would, indeed, have been in 
a sore strait, had it not been for Chateaugu^y, who, 
with his small vessel, sailed to Cuba, San Domingo, 
and Vera Cruz, bringing provisions and carrying 
the mails not only for the French, but for the 
Spaniards as well. For Pensacola had caught fire 
and burned to the ground, and had lost its only 
ship; and the Spaniards, in their misery, appealed 
to the French for aid. At last after three years of 
waiting, a ship with supplies came to Mobile; but 
again another three years passed without a ship. 



188 STOKIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

As the soldiers were not paid, many of them de- 
serted; those that remained were out of clothes; 
and would have gone naked, as Bienville wrote to 
his government, had he not given them deer skins 
to dress in. The one vessel the colony had sank; 
and if the officers of the garrison had not with 
their own mone}^ bought another from a captain, 
who came by chance to Dauphine Island, there 
would have been no means of communicating with 
San Domingo and Cuba. 

Provisions gave out, and, what was worse, the 
gunpowder threatened to give out. The able-bodied 
men had to serve as soldiers, and could not culti- 
vate the land; and, besides, there were no oxen 
to plow with. The fort, therefore, had to depend 
upon the Indians for corn. During the summer 
months, to save the food in the fort, Bienville was 
glad enough to allow his men to go and live among 
the neighboring Indians; but they enjoyed this so 
much, that it was not easy to get them to come back 
to duty, when summoned. 

At last, in 1711, when one overflow after the 
other had ruined the corn crops of the Indians, and 
there seemed no chance for any other food for the 
garrison than acorns, and when Fort Louis itself 
stood under water, Bienville decided to build an- 
other fort nearer the mouth of the river and closer 



UlENVILLIi. 189 

to Dauphine Island, so that one place could help 
the other more quickly in case of an attack by In- 
dians or English. All during these hard times he 
had been writing letter after letter to the royal 
minister, Pontchartrain, telling him of the great 
dearth the colony was in, and begging him to send 
the needed supplies of men, money and provisions ; 
telling him, also, how, with a handful of poorly 
clad, poorly fed, and poorly paid men, he had held 
the great country of Louisiana for France, and kept 
off the English ; had lived on good terms with the 
Spaniards, and had made the Indians respect his 
authority. But Ponchartrain did not send relief to 
the colony. He could not, in truth ; for France, at 
that time, needed all tlie money she had for uses 
nearer home. The man^^ wars and the luxury and 
extravagance of Louis XIV. had brought the coun- 
try almost to bankruptcy. Public expenses had to 
be cut down, and France's great glory and pride, 
her colonies, had to be sacrificed. As for Louisiana 
and the mouth of the Mississippi, Ponchartrain 
saw that he must abandon them, unless he could 
find some private person who would be willing to 
take them off his hands, for what money he could 
make out of them. He found what he wanted in the 
Sieur Antoine.de Crozat, a great banker, who un- 
dertook to keep up the colony for fifteen years for 



IDO STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

tlie profit he could get out of the monopoly of its 
trade. 

It was a blow to Bienville and his officers and his 
hardy indej^ndent Canadians to find, after their 
long years of struggle and their sore trials, that 
their king had made them over by charter to a 
banker, whose only feeling for the colony was to 
make money out of it. And, as if this were not dis- 
grace enough, a new governor, Lamothe Cadillac, 
was sent to take the place of Bienville. Bien- 
ville begged that he might retire and go back into 
the navy. But Louisiana without Bienville to man- 
age the Indians would have been a poor bargain for 
Crozat. Pontchartrain ordered him to remain in 
the colony, and to take up his station among the 
Natchez, where a fort was to be built. 

First War of the Natchez. 

But in January, 1716, before it was built and 
Bienville had taken up his post there, news came 
to Mobile that the Natchez, offended by some 
neglect or insult of Cadillac, had broken out into 
war with the French. They pillaged Crozat's store 
house there, killed the men in charge of it, and 
began putting to death every Frenchman they could 
catch traveling up and down the river. 

Bienville knew that the Natchez must be pun- 



FIRST WAR OF THE NATCHEZ. l9l 

ished severely, and at once, or they would despise 
the French as cowards, and other Indians would 
follow their example. But Cadillac would give him 
only forty-nine men, half the number he had asked 
for his campaign. With these, however, he started, 
and by April he reached the village of the Tunicas, 
about fifty miles below the Natchez, where he 
stopped. Here he learned that the Natchez had just 
killed another Frenchman on the river and were 
lying in wait for fifteen more, who were on their 
way down. He was warned, also, to be on his 
guard against the Tunicas, who had received pres- 
ents from the Natchez to kill him. As he had not 
men enough to punish the Natchez by force, he laid 
his plans to gain his point by cunning. Keeping 
all that he had learned to himself, he called 
together the Tunica warriors, and told them that 
he was on his way to the Natchez to make a trading 
post there, where they and other tribes could trade 
skins for merchandise; but as his men were very 
tired with the trip up the river, he was going to 
camp on the island a few miles below, to rest awhile. 
He also told the Tunicas they would do him a 
favor by sending some of their tribe to tell the 
Natchez that he was coming. This the Tunicas did ; 
and Bienville, after smoking their calumet, and 
making them smoke his, went to the island, where 



192 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

he put his men at once to work making a fortifica- 
tion, and building some cabins. A few days later, 
three Natchez arrived, sent by their chief to present 
the calumet to Bienville. He waved it aside, saying 
that they could get some of his soldiers to smoke 
it, but that for himself, being a great chief of the 
French, he would only smoke the calumet of a sun 
chief. This troubled the warriors. However, Bien- 
ville gave them something to eat, and talked gaily 
with them; asking news of their chiefs; saying he 
had a great desire to see them, that he was aston- 
ished that they had not already come, that the 
Natchez, perhaps, did not cai*e about the French 
making a trading post with them, and that, if this 
were so, he would make it among the Tunicas. The 
warriors replied that their nation desired nothing 
better than to have a French post on their territory, 
and that they were sure that in five or six days, 
without fail, the chiefs of the nation would come 
themselves to show their joy at it. The next day, 
the three warriors went away. Bienville sent with 
them a young Frenchman, who spoke their language 
perfectly, to whom he explained everything to say 
to the chiefs to induce them to come to the island. 
The same day he sent one of his bravest Canadians, 
in a pirogue, to slip by the Natchez at night, and 
hasten up the river to warn the fifteen men coming 



FIKST WAR OF THE NATCHEZ. 193 

down from the Illinois. He gave him, also, to place 
at the different points on the river, a dozen large 
sheets of parchment, on which was written in large 
characters: "The Natchez have declared war 
against the French, and M. de Bienville is camped 
at the village of the Tnnicas." 

In about a week, six Canadian trappers arrived 
at the island camp in three pirogues, loaded with 
skins, smoked beef, and bears' oil. They said that, 
not knowing of the war of the Natchez, they had 
landed there ; but hardly had their feet touched the 
earth, when some warriors jumped upon them and 
carried off everything they had in their pirogues, 
and took them to the village of the chief named 
"Bearded One." A short while afterwards, some of 
the great chiefs of the Natchez came in a great tem- 
per, and took the "Bearded One" to task for his 
treatment of the Canadians. Their arms were 
given back to them, and food was brought them; 
but, for three days, they were shut up in a cabin, 
while the chiefs and warriors talked over what 
should be done with them. Then they were taken 
to their pirogues, in which they found almost every- 
thing that had been taken from them. The 
chiefs told them that Bienville was at the village 
of the Tunicas, resting, and that shortly he ex- 
pected to come to the Natchez to make a trading 
post there. 



194 STORIES FKOM LOT'ISIAXA HISTORY. 

A few days later, iu the iiiornino-, there were seen 
nearing the ishind four pirogues, iu each of which 
were four men standing, chanting the calumet, and 
three sitting under i^arasols, with twelve men 
swimming alongside. They were the Xatchez chiefs 
coming to fall into the trap prepared for them. 

Bienville ordered one-half of his men not to show 
themselves, but to remain under arms near at hand. 
The other half were to stand unarmed around his 
tent, and when the boats were landed, were to take 
the arms one b}^ one of the savages as they stepped 
ashore; and he charged them only to let the eight 
chiefs he named enter his tent ; the rest were to be 
seated at the door. All of this was done, as he said. 
The eight chiefs came in singing, holding their calu- 
met, which tliey passed several times over Bienville, 
from his head to his feet, in sign of union; passing, 
also, their hands over his stomach, then over theirs; 
after which they presented him their calumet to 
smoke. He pushed it aside with contempt, and 
said he Avished to hear their speeches and know 
their thoughts before he smoked with them. The 
chiefs then went out of the tent, and presented their 
calumets to the sun. One of them fixing his looks 
on the sun, and raising his arms over his head, 
prayed to it. Then they came back into the tent, 
^nd again presented their calumets. Bienville told 



FIRST WAR OF THE NATCHEZ. 195 

them they had to tell him what Ksatisfaction they 
were going to give him for the five Frenchmen they 
had killed. They hung their heads without ansAver- 
ing. xVt this Bienville made a sign, and they were 
led to a prison and put in irons. In the evening- 
bread and meat were given to them. They refused 
to eat. All sang their death song. At nightfall, 
Bienville had the great chief of the nation, called 
"Great Sun," with his brother, '^Stung Serpent,'' 
and a second brother, named the ''Little Sun," 
brought to his tent. He told them he knew it Avas 
not by their orders that the five Frenchmen had 
been killed ; but he demanded not only the heads of 
the murderers to be brought to him, but the heads 
of the chiefs who had given the orders. He said 
that the scalps would not content him ; he wished 
their heads also, so as to recognize them. He added 
that it would be easy to declare war against the 
Natchez and to destroy their villages, without risk- 
ing the life of a single Frenchman; that they must 
remember how, in 1704, when the Chichimaches 
killed a missionary and three Frenchmen, and re- 
fused to give up the murderers, all of his Indian 
allies had been set upon them, and they were 
punished. He reminded them how he had con- 
demned a Frenchman to death for killing two Pas- 
cagoula Indians; and how the Coroas had put to 



190 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

death five of their warriors who had killed a mis- 
sionary and two other Frenchmen ; and that in the 
same year he had forced the chief of the Touachas 
to put to death two of his tribe who had assassi- 
nated a ChickasaAv; and later the Choctaws had 
given him the same satisfaction ; and after that, the 
Mobilians had brought him the head of one of their 
tribe who had killed an Indian ally ; and that, only 
a year or so before, when the Pascagoulas had killed 
a Mobilian, he had forced them to make amends for 
it. This speech, the truth of which they could not 
deny, made a great impression on the Natchej* 
chiefs. They listened with grave attention, but 
made no attempt to answer. Bienville gave them 
that night to decide what they would do. The next 
morning at daylight, the three brother chiefs asked 
to speak to Bienville. They told him there was 
no one in the village high enough in authority to 
put to death the men whose heads he demanded; 
that if he would permit it, the "Serpent," as the 
head of the nation, would go and do so. This Bien- 
ville refused, putting in the place of the "Serpent'' 
his younger brother, the "Little Sun," who went at 
once. Five days later, the "Little Sun" returned, 
fetching with him three heads; but only two be- 
longed to the murderers. Bienville sent for the 
chiefs, and the rejected bead was thrown at their 



FIRST WAR OF THE NATCHFZ. 19? 

feet, and they were told they had sacrificed an in- 
nocent man. The chiefs confessed that the head 
was that of a warrior who had talvcn no part in the 
killing of the Frenchmen, but that being the brother 
of one of the murderers, who had escaped, they had 
put him to death in his place. Bienville, showing 
his displeasure at this, told them they would have 
to send, on the morrow, another chief to their vil- 
lage to get the head he demanded. The next day, 
two warriors and the great priest of the temple 
went to the Natchez village. They were confident 
of bringing back the head of the chief "AYhite 
Earth," the leader of the movement against the 
French. 

The river now rose until the highest part of the 
island was overflowed a foot deep, and the tents and 
powder magazine had to be raised on scaffolds. The 
vs'eather grew very hot, and many of the men fell ill. 
Chief "Serpent" himself took a fever. Bienville had 
his irons removed, and brought him and his broth- 
ers into his own tent. During the days they passed 
together, he found out the truth about the outbreak 
of their tribe; and the names of the guilty warriors 
and chiefs who had killed the Frenchmen ; and he 
agreed to let his prisoners go to their village, on 
their promise to put to death the murderer, who 
had run away, as soon as they could catch him. 



198 STORIES FRO:^I LOnSIAXA HISTORY. 

The chiefs consented to this, and that Bienville 
should put to death two warriors taken in the Sun's 
party, who had been proved to have had a hand in 
the killing* of the Frenchmen. They pledged them- 
selves, also, to furnish timber and help in building 
a French fort at their landing, and to live in future 
peace with the French. 

As the Mississippi did not fall, and the island 
was still under water, Bienville sent his sick sol- 
diers to the high lands of the Tunicas, where the 
Indians cared for them and kept them supplied 
with fresh beef and venison. As he heard that the 
Spaniards from Mexico Avere coming towards Red 
river to take possession there, he hurried off to the 
head of the river, so as to make a settlement there 
before them. On his return, he went with his men to 
Xatchez, and stayed at the new fort until it was fin- 
ished. The Indians, true to their word, furnished 
all the timber and cypress bark the builders needed. 
The fort was named ''Rosalie," after the wife of the 
Duke of Pontchartrain. 

At the end of August, Bienville handed over the 
command of the fort to his lieutenant, and he went 
down the river to make his report to his superior 
officer, the Governor Cadillac. But when he ar- 
rived in Mobile, in October, he found great news 
awaitinc: him. Cadillac had been recalled, and 



I'HE COMPANY OF THE WEST. 199 

Bienville was ordered to take his place until the 
new governor, de FEpinay, arrived. He came in 
March, in a ship that brought fifty emigrants and 
three companies of soldiers. To Bienville was sent, 
as a reward for his services, the Cross of St. Louis. 
This was a medal in the shape of a cross, which the 
king conferred on men who had served France with 
distinction. Many of them can still be seen in 
Louisiana, in the possession of the descendants of 
those who received them. 



THE COMPANY OF THE WEST. 



The Founding of New Orleans. 

But De TEpinay had a sliort rule as governor. 
Crozat, who had lost monej^ in Louisiana, instead of 
making it, prayed the king that he might give up his 
charter. His prayer was granted; but Louisiana 
did not go back under the royal government. By 
another charter, she was made over for twenty-five 
years to a company called the Company of the West, 



200 STORIES FliOM LOUISIANA IIISTOKY. 

or the Company of the ^Mississippi ; for such is the 
name it is known by. 

This company undertook what Crozat had just 
failed in, to pay the expenses of tlie colony for what 
profit could be made out of it. But the company 
went about in a different way to make the profit. 
Throu*>hout all France it advertised the soil and 
the future wealth of Louisiana. By every means it 
urged people to go there and settle. It sold great 
tracts of lands to French buyers, who, in their turn, 
sold it in smaller pieces to people with less money. 
Lords and ladies bought estates in Louisiana, and 
sent out settlers to it from their estates in the old 
country. And the company itself sent out emi- 
grants by the ship loads. 

The Company recalled De FEpinay, and made 
Bienville governor, as the one man who was able to 
bring about the great future planned for Louisiana. 
But under him was a council composed of directors 
of the company, sent from France, who voted on all 
measures and in fact acted with the governor very 
much as our city council acts with the mayor. 
Ships soon began to arrive at Dauphine Island, 
loaded with money, provisions, merchandise, and 
emigrants. A corps of able engineers under the 
command of the Chevalier Leblond de la Tour came 
to superintend the construction of such public 



THE COMPANY OF THE WEST. 201 

buildings as were needed. At last Bienville bad 
tbe men and money be wanted to carry out bis ideas 
about tbe colony. He at once sent men to take pos- 
session of tbe site of La Salle's old fort on tbe coast 
of Texas, and to build a new fort tbere, so as to 
make sure against tbe Spaniards in tbat quarter. 
He sent fifty emigrants up Red river to settle in tbe 
country of tbe Caddodaquious, or Caddos, as we call 
them today. He ordered tbe engineers to sound and 
examine tbe mouth of tbe ^lississippi, and to find a 
channel for ships through it. He, himself, Avith a 
party of workmen, set out for a purpose that bad 
been in bis heart for eighteen years, ever since the 
time when be had commanded at Fort ^laurepas. 
This was to found a city on tbe banks of tbe Mis- 
sissippi ; for he was sure tbat a city there would 
one day be one of tbe great centers of trade on this 
continent. He had chosen tbe spot, as we have 
seen, years before, and bad even settled some Can- 
adians upon it. He named the place Orleans, after 
the Duke of Orleans, tbe regent of France, but be 
called it ^'New Orleans," as there was another city 
named Orleans in France. In tbe meantime, ship 
after ship arrived at Daupbine Island with emi- 
grants for the concessions (as tbe grants of land 
were called), that had been sold in France. These 
concessions were all along tbe Mississippi and on 



202 STORII]S FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the Gulf coast, at Natchitoches, on the Yazoo river, 
at Bay KSt. Louis, at Natchez, and so on. But the 
emigrants had to wait on Dauphine Island until 
boats and carts could be made to send them on to 
the homes which they had come to settle. Thus the 
island became packed with people, and a more help- 
less lot never landed in a new country; ignorant 
peasants, tired from a long sea voyage and weak 
from sickness, without shelter, with scant rations 
of food, with no work, blinded by the dazzling white 
sand, under the burning rays of a tropical sun, 
and catching the fever which the ships brought 
from Cuba and San Domingo. Always waiting, and 
hoping and being disappointed, many, indeed most, 
of the unfortunate creatures, died of misery on the 
on the spot. The directors of the company saw that 
a move must be made to a better place for the re- 
ceiving and handling of such great numbers of im- 
migrants. Bienville spoke and urged in favor of 
New Orleans, where he said the immigrants could 
be landed straight from the ships, and be easily 
sent to their different concessions, or could sup- 
port themselves at once by cultivating the soil. 

But the directors, who were strangers in Louis- 
iana, voted not with Bienville, but against him, 
for Biloxi. A move to the old fort that Iberville 
had built was made in all haste, and Fort Louis and 
Dauphine Island were left almost deserted. 



THE COMPANY OF Tlllil WEST. 203 

But what Bienville foretold came to pass. Things 
were not made better by the move to Biloxi. The 
immigrants unloaded there, found the same bare, 
white sands, the same burning sun, the same want 
of food. The famine became so great that more 
than five hundred died of hunger. Fish and oysters 
were all the food that the starving creatures could 
find, and to get them they had to wade in water up 
to their waists, and their dead bodies would often 
be found around piles of oyster shells. And crime 
and lawlessness added to the suffering ; for, in their 
eagerness to build up the new country, the com- 
pany shipped as emigrants to Louisiana any men 
that their agents could get, even from prisons, re- 
formatories, asylums, hospitals. People were kid- 
napped even in the streets of Paris and other large 
cities of France, and sold to the agents at so much 
a head. To finish the misery of it all, yellow fever 
broke out. 

It seemed almost a special blessing when a 
drunken, sleeping sergeant let his lighted pipe fall 
from his hand, in his tent, and started a fire that 
burned Biloxi to the ground. The council of 
directors were glad to change to some other place, 
and again Bienville tried to get them to move the 
colony to New Orleans ; but he was again outvoted. 
The directors said there was not enough water at 



204 STORIES FROM LOl'ISIANA HISTORY. 

the moutli of the Mississippi for loaded vessels to 
get through. So New Biloxi — the present town of 
Biloxi — was chosen. Bienville, to show that a loaded 
vessel could get through the mouth of the river, 
took one through it himself. lie ordered, besides, 
one of De la Tour's assistants, Pauger, to go to the 
passes, and sound and make maps of them, and to 
write a report to send to France, proving the truth 
of what he had said to the council — -that the Mis- 
sissippi was deep enough for large vessels, and 
that New Orleans should be the capital of the 
colonv. He also sent Pauger with a force of men 
to lay out his city. 

Just at this time, the news came that the Com- 
pam^ of the ^lississippi had failed. But too much 
money had been spent on Louisiana ; too many 
emigrants — over seven- thousand — had been sent 
there, for the colony to be given up. The affairs of 
the compan}^ were put into the hands of a board 
of liquidation, as is done now-a-days with the affairs 
of a railroad or any other great public enterprise. 
Bienville's letters, with the engineer's maps and 
reports, coming at this time, convinced the new 
board that he was right; and he received the long- 
wished-for orders to remove the colony to New 
Orleans, and to make it the capital of Louisiana. 

The work of this was beirun at once. In June, 



- THE CO:MrANY OF THE WEST. 205 

1722, De la Tour and Pauger led the way by sailing 
up the river in a loaded vessel ; and other boats fol- 
lowed with men, building materials, ammunition, 
and provisions. Under De la Tour's direction the 
new city took shape. A church and houses were 
built; a levee was thrown up in front; ditches 
made; a canal dug in the rear for drainage. A cem- 
etery was laid out and a landing place made. Bien- 
ville himself came and took up his residence there 
in August. 

But New Orleans had no easier a beginning than 
Mobile or Biloxi. In the midst of the building and 
moving, the September storm came on with a vio- 
lence never known before. For five da^^s, a furious 
hurricane raged over land and sea. The church and 
most of the new buildings were blown down, and 
three vessels were wrecked in the river. And after 
this the fever broke out and most of the new popula- 
tion were taken ill, and many died. Bienville him- 
self, the untiring Bienville, fell so ill of fever that 
hope for his life was given up. But the city grew 
despite it all. And the little square map of houses 
that De la Tour made began to fill up with inhab- 
itants. Ships still brought in merchandise and 
emigrants; many of these stayed in the city, and 
many that had gone into the country left their 
land there, preferring to settle around the city. A 



206 



STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 



party of these, Germans, were given land on both 
sides of the river, about twenty miles above the 
city, which is still called from them '^Cote des Alle- 






□BQDQaDD 




□ 



mands." They cultivated gardens, and in time sup- 
plied New Orleans with vegetables. Every Satur- 
day evening, their little boats could be seen coming 
down the river, with their fresh green loads. 

Second Natchez War. 

The year after he had moved to New Orleans, 
Bienville had again to go against the Natchez, who, 
forgetting the punishment they had received, 
began anew their attacks upon the property and 
lives of the French. After trying in vain, by peace^ 
fill means, to bring them back to their duty, Bien- 



SECOND NATCHEZ WAR. 207 

ville came against them suddenly with an army of 
seven hundred men. His old friend, ''Stung Ser- 
pent/' hurried to him at Fort Rosalie. He came, he 
said, to beg pardon for his nation. He confessed 
that the people of the White Apple, Jenzenaque, 
and Gray villages were in a state of rebellion 
against the French, but he prayed that vengeance 
should strike only them. This Bienville promised. 
His army, taking all care for the surprise of the 
Indians, slipped through the narrow paths of the 
forest surrounding the White Apple village. But 
when thej reached the village, it was found 
to hold nothing but empty cabins. The people had 
received warning, and, in their turn, had slipped 
away; and it was the French who were sur- 
prised. They had only the satisfaction of a 
cruel foe — that of burning the village. A few 
days later, Bienville led his army against the Gray 
village, but it, too, was empty; its people had 
escaped. It also was burned. From a captured 
squaw Bienville learned that the Indians were 
awaiting the French at the Jenzenaque village, a 
half league away. The army wheeled about, and a 
Tunica chief taking {lie lead, it marched upon that 
village. Here was a strong cabin, built on a height ; 
and the French believed that this time they would 
catch the Indians in it. The drums beat, the fifes 



208 JSTOKIKS FROM L0U1«1AXA HISTORY. 

struck up, and the army advanced. But this cabin, 
like the others, was empt}^; the people of the village 
had escaped. The Tunica chief, taking a turn 
around the height, saw below him one of the 
Natchez chiefs, or rather they both at the same 
time saw each other, and fired. The Tunica chief 
killed his enemy on the spot, but fell himself at the 
same time, dangerously wounded. 

The baffled army marched back to Fort Rosalie, 
and Bienville did all that was left for him to do. He 
summoned '^Stung Serpent" to him, and through 
him made a peace Avith the Natchez, on condition 
that the chief of the White Apple village should 
pay, with his life, for the lives of t'^ Fr":::ximen he 
had taken. The ''Serpent" asked to be given three 
days. AYlien they were over, he came, bring- 
ing the bloody head of the guilty chief. Bienville 
returned to New Orleans; but before long there 
came to him a sad surprise — a letter from the king 
ordering him to turn the colony over to another, 
and to return at once to France. 

Kecall of Bienville. 

This meant that he was to answer charges made 
against him and, perhaps, suffer a penalty. From 
the very beginning of the colony, from the days of 
Iberville, there had been ill feeling between the 



RECALL OF BIENVILLE. 209 

Canadians and the French. The French resented 
the influence of the Canadians, whom they looked 
upon as rough, uneducated pioneers. The Can- 
adians, great, strong, hearty, and mighty in their 
way with the savages, despised the Frenchmen for 
their polisli and civility. The Canadians felt that 
it was they who had made Louisiana, not the 
French, who came there only as soldiers or to fill 
offices and to keep accounts. The French, who did 
fill the government offices, and keep the accounts, 
and wrote home long official reports, seldom failed 
in these reports to call the attention of the govern- 
ment to the failings of the Canadians. They 
accused them of smuggling and of illegal trading 
with the Indians, and of banding themselves 
together against the French, whenever any diffi- 
culty arose in the Colony. Bienville, the idol of the 
Canadians, was accused not only of upholding them 
in this conduct, but also of making a profit out of 
his position, that is, of trading the government 
stores to the Indians for skins, and putting the 
money in his pocket. When he was placed in com- 
mand of Mobile, this malicious accusation was 
started against Bienville, and it had been kept 
going ever since by one French official after an- 
other. It was true, and no one could deny it, that 
under Bienville the savage countries settled by 



210 STORIES FliOM LOI'ISIAXA HISTORY. 

Iberville had become a great French colony, with a 
city that bade fair, even then, to be a great center 
of commerce. It Avas true, as all knew, that Bien- 
ville himself, in his long service, had never made 
money ; that, on the contrary, he was a poor man ; 
that his life had never been other than that of a 
frugal, simple Canadian pioneer. The charges, 
nevertheless, were believed in France, and he was 
recalled. 

He turned over the government of Louisiana to 
another, as ordered, and made his preparations to 
sail at once. He took leave of his friends, and went 
to Dauphine Island to wait for his ship. A very 
strange thing now happened. The ship came into 
the roadstead in front of the harbor, but an acci- 
dent, the upsetting of her barge, on the way to land, 
prevented Bienville's going aboard. As it was 
Saturday of Holy Week, his departure was put off 
until Easter Monday. At dawn of that day, he was 
to sail, and boats were sent ashore for him and his 
luggage. Hardly had the boats reached land, when 
the ship fired two cannon shots, signals for help. 
The weather was delightful, there was not a wave 
nor a breath of wind. Before the eyes of all, how- 
ever, she sank under the water, the crew and pas- 
sengers jumping overboard. She had sprung a 
leak. Bienville returned to New Orleans, and 
waited for another ship. 



RECALL OF BlENVlLLl^. 211 

When he reached France, he presented, as his 
justification to the minister, the memoir of the 
services that had filled his life, since, as a mere boy, 
he had come with his brother Iberville to explore 
the country, for whose misgovernment he was now, 
a middle-aged man, called to account. The paper 
begins proudly: "For thirty-four years the Sieur 
de Bienville has had the honor of serving the king ; 
twenty-seven of them as lieutenant of the King and 
commandant of the colony." After giving an 
account of his government, he modestly tells 
about himself: "It was not without trouble 
that I became absolute master of so many 
nations with such barbarous tempers and 
different characters. One can imagine how 
many difficulties I encountered and what risks 
I ran to found the colony and maintain it to the 
present time. Necessity, it is said, renders one 
industrious; I experienced that it also renders one 
intrepid in danger, and makes one perform, so to 
speak, the impossible in the different conjunctures 
one has to meet in an unknown world with so small 
a force. I first strove to qualify myself to govern 
without the aid of an interpreter. I applied myself 
to learn the language which appeared to me to be 
the dominant one among the savages, the knowledge 
of which would help me in learning the others. I 



212 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

was fortunate enough from the first to gain the 
confidence and friendship of the savages. I studied 
their customs in order to retain them in peace, one 
with the other; so that for the twenty-seven years 
during which I had the honor of commanding in 
the province, I was the arbiter of their differences." 
But notwithstanding, and just as if the charges 
against him had been proved, Bienville was 
deprived of his rank and his offices, and in his ruin 
his whole family and all his relatives in Louisiana 
suffered. They, also, were dismissed from the 
service and ordered to France. Even tlie oflflcial 
members of his government were disgraced, and, 
within a year, not one of the old .Canadian set held 
office in the colony. The new governor who took 
Bienville's place was named Perier. 



THE NATCHEZ MASSACRE. 

All went well in Louisiana for two years after 
the arrival of the new governor. In the country 
the plantations made good crops, and the city in- 
creased in size, in population, and in trade. The 



THE NATCHEZ MASSACRE. 213 

Indians were quiet and peaceful. Therefore, like 
a thunderclap in a cloudless sky, came the news, in 
1727, that the Natchez had risen and murdered all 
the white people at Fort Rosalie and in the neigh- 
boring settlements. 

Ever since Bienville's last treaty with them, 
the Natchez had been good friends of the French, 
and they would have continued so, but for the ty- 
ranny and injustice of Chepart, the officer in com- 
mand of Fort Rosalie. He drove them to the re- 
venge which caused the ruin of the fort and finally 
of the Natchez nation itself. 

Looking for land for a plantation, Chepart cast 
his eyes upon the charming White Apple village, 
and he determined to make it his own. He sent for 
the Sun of the village, and ordered him and his 
tribe to leave it. The Sun replied that the ances- 
tors of his tribe had lived in the village as many 
years as there were hairs in his warlock, and it 
was only right that he and his children should still 
live in it. But the French officer would not listen to 
him, and fixed the day for the Indians to leave the 
village. The Sun, calling together the men of his 
village, made a speech, telling them of the outrage 
that was to be done to them, and urging them to 
make a stand against the tyranny of the French. 
A'illage by village was aroused^ and their Suns 



214 ►STUUIES FiiOM LOUISIANA IILSTOKY. 

swore to strike one bloody blow, and free them- 
selves forever from the yoke that was upon them. 
To all the villages were sent packages of an equal 
number of sticks tied together, and the command 
was given to take out a stick every day after the 
new moon, and to fall upon the French and kill 
them on the day on which the last stick was taken 
out. 

The fatal day arrived. By daylight the Natchez, 
in small groups, strolled into Fort liosalie and the 
neighboring white settlements, until they out- 
numbered the whites. Pretending they were going 
on a hunt, they borrowed guns and bought powder 
and shot. At nine o'clock the signal was given. 
Each Indian fell on a man. By noon two hundred 
Frenchmen were killed, and ninety-two women 
and fifty-five children and all the negroes were 
made prisoners. Chepart was among the first 
slain. During the massacre, the Great Sun was 
coolly and carelessly smoking his pipe in a govern- 
ment warehouse. His men brought to him the 
heads of the French officers, placing that of Che- 
part in the center and the others around. When 
the Sun was informed that not a white man was 
left alive, except a carpenter and a tailor specially 
saved from the massacre, he gave the command to 
pillage. Every building was sacked and the spoils 



THE NATCHEZ MASSACRE. 215 

divided. Two soldiers, who were accidentally in 
the woods, escaped and carried the news to New 
Orleans. 

The colony trembled from one end to the other. 
New Orleans went into a panic. Ships were sent 
to France for troops. Couriers were hurried to the 
Illinois, the Red Eiver, and to the Mobile settle- 
ments, warning the white men there. 

Their Choctaw allies were the first in the field 
for the French. Seven hundred of them falling upon 
the Natchez, while they were still in the midst of 
their feasting and rejoicing, killed sixty of their 
warriors, and rescued fifty-nine women and chil- 
dren, and one hundred shrv^es, who had been taken 
prisoners. By the time the troops from New Or- 
leans arrived, the Natchez had fortified themselves 
in two strong houses in the White x\pple village. 
Fort Yalor (as the French well named it) and 
Fort Flour. Their defense was so good that the 
French, with all their cannon, could not force them 
to surrender. In fact they held their own so bravely 
that the French had to make terms with them. 
They agreed to deliver up the rest of the French 
women, children, and negro prisoners, if the French 
would retire from the village, with their guns, to 
the banks of the river. This agreement was carried 
out. But two nights afterwards^ the Natchez 



21G STORIES FROM LOT ISIAXA HISTORY. 

made their escape from their forts so secreth^ that 
the French could not pursue them. Some of them 
sought refuge with the Chickasaws; others, cross- 
ing tlie Mississippi, made their way westward, 
through forest and swamp, to a mound in the pres- 
ent i3arish of Catahoula. Here they remained until 
tidings reached them that Perier was leading a 
great army of white men and Indians against them. 
They then withdrcAv to a high bluff, known now as 
Sicily Island, at the end of Lake Lovelace, where 
they fortified themselves. 

In the middle of the summer, the reinforcements 
from France arrived, eight hundred French and 
Swiss soldiers. These, with Avhat he could raise 
among the colonists and his Indian allies, gave 
Perier over a thousand men to lead against his 
enemies. He went up the Mississippi to the mouth 
of the Red Piver, and went through Ped Piver to 
Black Piver, and up the Ouachita, until he reached 
the bluff, upon Avhich the Natchez stood like beasts 
at bay. But as before, the Natchez would not give 
up, and held their own, until the French were glad 
to talk about a treaty. Perier, however, refused to 
treat with any but chiefs. Two Suns and the war- 
rior who had defended Fort Flour so gallantly, 
came forward, but Perier dishonorably seized them 
as prisoners, and then demanded the surrender of 



THE NATCHEZ MASSACRE. 217 

all the French prisoners. To this the chiefs had to 
agree. During the night, the warrior from Fort 
Flour made his escape ; but the Two Suns were not 
so fortunate — they were discovered in the attempt 
and held. Perier then offered to spare the lives of 
all the Natchez men, women, and children who de- 
livered themselves up to him. The next day four 
hundred women and children and forty-five men 
left the Natchez fortifications, and ranged them- 
selves inside those of the French ; but they came in 
such small groups that the whole day was passed in 
the surrender. Seventy still remained in the fort, 
asking to stay there until the morrow. It was rain- 
ing in torrents. Between the water under foot and 
the water overhead, Perier, not being able to take 
them, was forced to consent. At nine o^clock at 
night, the weather cleared and the* French were 
able to take possession of the Natchez forts. They 
closed in around them, and found them — deserted! 
Again the warriors of the Natchez, under the lead- 
ership of the warrior of Fort Flour, had given the 
slip to their captors. The forts were destroyed, and 
the only two prisoners taken there were, as if in 
spite, scalped and burned. Perier returned to New 
Orleans with his women and children prisoners, 
and the two Suns, and the forty warriors, all of 
whom Avere sold into slavery in San Domingo. 



218 STOKIEIS FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

The number of Natchez Indians who had escaped 
was three hundred. They spread themselves over 
the Eed River country, and took possession of a 
deserted Natchitoches village, from which they were 
driven out only after an obstinate fight. They then 
took refuge with the Chickasaws, Avho, as we re- 
member, were enemies of the French, and who from 
the first had offered their villages and strongholds 
to them. 

With the peace, prosperity, and life of the colony 
threatened by an Indian war, the directors in 
France could not hope to make any profit out of 
Louisiana trade. They therefore gave the colony 
back to the king. 

In New Orleans confidence in Perier was lost, 
and those of the old colonists who had served under 
Bienville's long and wise administration, wrote to 
the French government, telling of Bienville's 
wisdom in dealing with the Indians, and declaring 
that he was the best governor that had ever been 
in the colony. This had a good etfect. Perier was 
recalled, and Bienville was given his old place. 



LAST CAMPAIGNS OF BIENVILLE, 



On liis way to Louisiana Bienville stopped at 
San Domingo, and be saw there his old friends, the 
Natchez Suns, who had been sold into slavery. He 
was very much touched with their changed fate and 
wretched appearance. Very different was their 
condition, indeed, from what it was when they 
came in such state in their pirogues to meet him on 
the island in the Mississippi. They told Bienville 
hoAV they had been driven to revolt by the hard 
treatment they had received from the French offir 
cers, and they said they bitterly regretted the sad 
ending of their long friendship with the French. 

Bienville's first and foremost duty, after his ar- 
rival, was to bring the Natchez tribe to account 
for the massacre at Fort Rosalie, and to punish the 
Chickasaws for receiving and protecting them. 

The country of the Chickasaws laj, as has been 
said, in the northern part of the present states of 
Alabama and Mississippi. Bienville's plan of cam- 
paign was one that he thought could not fail of suc- 
cess, It was to go up the Tombigbee River into the 



220 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Chickasaw country, where D'Artaguette, the com- 
maiidaut of the Illinois country, was to join him in 
October with three hundred men. But as his boats 
could not be gotten ready in time, Bienville had to 
send a messenger to D'Artaguette, putting off the 
meeting until the middle of April. 

On the first of April all was ready, and a grand 
start was made from Mobile. A fine shoAv the army 
made, rowing up the river in the early morning 
sunlight; thirty pirogues folloAved by thirty flat- 
boats, loaded with five hundred soldiers, without 
counting the brilliant staff of officers, and the com- 
pany of forty-five blacks, commanded by free 
negroes. 

It took twenty-three days to get to the place of 
meeting on the Tombigbee. No trace of D'Arta- 
guette and the Illinois men was to be seen. But the 
Choctaw chiefs, with their warriors, arrived 
promptly, on time at the place of landing, shortly 
after the French. After throwing up a fortification, 
and leaving a small force behind them, to protect 
their boats and proAdsions, the army set out on the 
march to the Chickasaw villages. At first it was a 
hard march through deep ravines filled with water 
waist high, and across thick-grown cane-brakes. But 
after this came a beautiful country easy to travel. 
Camp was pitched about six miles from the Chicka- 



THE LAST CA:MPAIGNS OP BIENVILLE. ^2l 

saw villages.. Tlie chief of the Choctaws asked 
Bienville which village he intended to attack first. 
Bienville told him the Natchez village, as they 
svere the authors of the war. The cliief then ex- 
plained that the first village was the nearest Chick- 
asaw village to the Choctaws, and did them most 
harm, and that he would like to attack that first, 
especially as.it was filled with provisions which the 
Choctaws needed. Knowing that the Choctaws, 
after taking this first village, would go back home, 
with the provisions, Bienville pursuaded them to 
attack the Natchez village first, promising to return 
and take the other one afterwards. The Choctaws 
seeined satisfied, and their guides, leading the army 
as if to conduct it to the point agreed upon, came 
to a small prairie, wliere were three little villages, 
placed like a triangle on the crest of a ridge, at 
the foot of which flowed a brook almost dry. This 
prairie was separated only by a small forest from 
the large prairie where lay most of the Chickasaw 
villages. Bienville marched his army along the 
edge of the woods surrounding the smaller prairie, 
and stopped on a little hill, where a halt was made 
for dinner. It was just past mid-day. 

The tricky Choctaws had gained their point; 
they had led the army before the village that they 
wanted to attack, and now with war cries and yells. 



222 STORIES FROM LOUISIA^'A HISTORY. 

they began skirmishing around it, and drew its 
fire upon the French. From the little hill where 
the French were, they could clearly see four or five 
Englishmen bustling around among the excited 
Chickasaws, and over one village floated the En- 
glish flag. The French ofiicers then angrily joined 
their demands to those of the Choctaws that this 
village should be taken at once. Pressed thus on 
all sides, Bienville ordered the attack. A company 
of grenadiers, drawn from the French and Swiss 
trooi)s, and forty-five volunteers under Bienville's 
nephew, De No^^an, were commanded to lead it. 
They moved out of the woods, crossed the brook, 
and began to ascend the ridge, when a murderous 
fire poured upon them from the three villages. The 
column of grenadiers which first reached the 
summit of the ridge, and the entrance to the vil- 
lage, met the full fire of the three batteries of the 
three strong-holds. 

Bienville thus describes the Chickasaw strong- 
holds : "After having surrounded their cabins with 
several rows of great stockades filled with earth, 
they hollow out the inside, until they can let them- 
selves down into it shoulder deep, and shoot 
through loopholes almost level with the ground; 
but they obtain still more advantage from the situ- 
ation of their cabins, which are placed so that their 



DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH. 223 

fires cross. The coverings of the cabins are a 
thatching of wood and mud, proof against fire, ar- 
rows, and grenades ; nothing but bombs could dam- 
age them.'' 

Defeat of the French. 

Two or three cabins were taken and burned; but 
when it came to crossing, under fire, the open space 
between these and the next, De Noyan, looking 
about him, saw only a few officers, a remnant of 
grenadiers, and about a dozen volunteers. The 
other soldiers were seeking shelter from the Indian 
loop-holes, behind the captured cabins, and refused 
to come out. Almost all the officers were killed or 
wounded. De Noyan and four officers fell wounded 
at the same moment. In vain he sent his aide to 
rally the soldiers; the aide was killed, and this 
added to their panic. He finally got a message to 
Bienville that, unless help were sent or a retreat 
sounded, not an officer would be left alive. Bien- 
ville ordered the retreat, sending a company to pro- 
tect it. The officers were found crowded together, 
still fighting. The Choctaws were hiding under a 
hill. 

The night was passed in cutting down trees and 
making hasty defences against surprise, but the 
Chickasaws held themselves quiet in their strong- 



224 STORIES FUOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

holds. The next morning Bienville dared not re- 
new the attack. Litters were made for the 
Avounded, and the beaten French troops led the 
way back to the landing^ and embarked in their 
boats. The Tombigbee was slowly reached, and 
finally the Mobile. Here Bienville heard the first 
news of the full extent of his disaster. The young 
commandant of the Illinois, D'Artaguette, had not 
received the message changing the date of meeting, 
and so had set out at the date first named, with one 
hundred and forty white men, and two hundred and 
sixty Iroquois, Arkansas, Miamis, and Illinois. 
Arrived at the place of meeting, his scouts could 
discover no signs or traces of Bienville's army. He 
called his officers and Indian chiefs together in a 
council of war. They advised not to wait, but to 
strike a blow at once. Pushing forward, they ar- 
rived within a mile of the great Chickasaw prairie. 
Leaving their baggage under a guard of thirty men, 
the army confidently took the road to the village. 
It was the road to death for all but two of them. 
Hardly had the attack on the village begun, when 
a troop of from four to five hundred savages darted 
from behind the neighboring hill, and bore down 
upon D'Artaguette's men with such speed and 
force, that his Indians, the greater part of his army, 
took to flight. He turned to gain the road to his 



DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH. 225 

luggage, in order to save or, at least, blow up his 
powder. Fighting desperately, step by step, he, 
his officers, men, and the Iroquois and Arkansas, 
who stood by him, held out for a short space. Then 
the savages overwhelmed them. Nineteen only were 
taken alive, among them D'Artaguette, wounded 
in three places, and a Jesuit priest. 

Two of the prisoners were put aside to exchange 
for a Chickasaw warrior in the hands of the 
French. The remaining were divided into two lots, 
and burned in two huge fires, prepared by the 
Chickasaw women. All died heroically, one French- 
man singing his death song to the last, like an 
Indian brave. 

By the papers found on D'Artaguette, which 
were read to them by their English friends, the 
Chickasaws learned the plan of Bienville's cam- 
paign. And they took their measures of defense, 
and, as we have seen, took them well. The English 
supplied them with ammunition, and showed them 
how to fortify their cabins. They had only to 
wait for Bienville to come, certain of defeating him. 

Bienville never recovered from the pain and 
shame of this double defeat. He returned to 
New Orleans, more determined now than ever 
to go against the Natchez and Chickasaws 
in such force as would crush them, and wipe 



22G STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

out the disgrace of the French defeat by a brilliant 
triumph. He wrote to France for artillery and 
bombs and soldiers ; and to the governor of Canada 
for a reinforcement of Canadian volunteers. He 
sent engineers to explore the best routes to the 
Chickasaws, and he kept his Canadians busy, win- 
ning over the Indians to join him. On the report of 
the engineers, he selected the route by the Missis- 
sippi and Yazoo rivers, and two years were spent in 
building a fort, called Fort Assumption, and a 
depot for provisions, at the mouth of Wolf river. 
This fort was to be the meeting place of the whole 
army. Two hundred horses were sent from New 
Orleans for the transportation of provisions, which 
were to be drawn from the rich fields of the West. 
Beeves and oxen were ordered from the Natchi- 
toches country. 

In the summer of 1739, the help asked for came 
from France : arms, ammunition, provisions. There 
were also, seven hundred sol^liers, bombar- 
diers, cannoneers, and miners; but, on their arrival, 
these were suffering so much from scurvy that less 
than one-half were able to go on duty. Then they 
took the fever, and great numbers of them died. 
They were hurried out of the city, but on their way 
up the river, many more of them died. 

When Bienville himself landed at Fort Assump- 



DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH. 227 

tion, he found the men from Canada and the Illi- 
nois waiting. They raised his army to twelve hun- 
dred white men and two thousand four hundred 
savages. But it was one thing to get an army to the 
fort, and another to get it into the Chickasaw 
country. The continual rains and overflows made 
the roads impassable for heavy wagons and artil- 
lery, while the bottom lands could be crossed only 
by boats or on bridges. More than one-half of the 
live stock died in the woods before reaching the 
river. Three months passed, and the situation did 
not improve. Without a road and the means of get- 
ting to the Chickasaws, the French army saw itself 
in danger of a more inglorious fate even than befell 
it on the Tombigbee; and the safety of the 
Chickasaws was proved more clearly than ever. A 
council of war was held to decide how to end the 
campaign in the manner least shameful to the 
French. 

The Chickasaws, on their side, saw with uneasi- 
ness, the great preparations made against them, 
and in spite of the arms and ammunition given by 
the English and the strength of their forts, they 
began to drop, all around the French camp, calu- 
mets and other symbols of peace. These, at first, 
the French refused to consider; but finally they 
decided to seek an agreement with the Indians. The 



228 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

chiefs were persuaded, by the Indian allies of the 
French, to come to the French camp and ask for 
peace; but they were told they could not get it 
unless they gave up the Natchez. The cunning 
savages were prepared for this condition. They 
declared they had bound and imprisoned their 
Natchez guests in order to surrender them to the 
French, but that unfortunately some of their young 
men had released them, and all except three had 
gone to the Cherokees. Again the Natchez had 
escaped ! 

Bienville returned with his army to New Orleans. 
There, feeling bitterly that, after this last defeat, 
his old reputation could no longer be the same in 
the colony, he wrote to his government, asking to 
be relieved of his office. This was granted, and the 
Marquis de Yaudreuil was named to succeed him. 
While awaiting the arrival of his successor, Bien- 
ville endeavored to arrange affairs with the 
Indians, so that the colony would not suffer by his 
absence. Calling the prominent chiefs of the Ala- 
bamma tribes to meet him at Mobile, he made them 
presents, and had them sign treaties, which wouM 
help them to get along with his successor. He left 
Louisiana forever on the 10th of May, 1743. He 
came to the colony a youth, full of hope and cour- 
age ; he left it looking like an aged man, worn witli 



REVOLUTION OF 17G8. 229 

care, anxiety, and disappointment. He had given 
fortv-five years of toil to the task left him by Iber- 
ville. We shall meet him once again, twenty-two 
years later, in our stories. He died in Paris in 
1768, a white-haired patriarch of eighty-eight years. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1768. 



The Treaties. 

In the year 1762 peace was made between the 
great nations of Western Europe, Great Britain, 
France, and Spain. War had been going on for 
nearly seven years, especially between Great Brit- 
ain and France; and this latter country had lost 
so many battles that she was glad to sign a treaty 
of peace. But by this treaty (the first form of 
which was drawn up November 3d, 1762), France 
had to agree to give up to Great Britain all that 
part of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi 
river, except the Isle of Orleans. As the American 
colonies had not yet won their independence. Great 
Britain now owned all of North x^merica from the 



230 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HtSTOIlY. 

Atlantic to the Mississippi. Just across the Missis- 
sippi was the great province of Louisiana with the 
city of New Orleans at its lower end, all of which 
still belonged to France. But France was afraid 
that this portion, also, might fall into the hands 
of Great Britain; and so the French king (Louis 
XV.) now decided secretly to give it away to his 
cousin, Charles III. of Spain, who had given him 
help in the recent Avars. Spain already had Mexico 
and South America and might be strong enough 
to keep Great Britain from crossing the Mississippi 
and taking the rest of Louisiana. 

When the King of Spain was told of this splendid 
present, he agreed to accept it, but neither he nor 
the King of France let the secret be known to the 
world for nearly two years. It is hard to keep 
such a secret, however, and soon after the treaty 
was made, it was whispered about in New Orleans 
that Louisiana no longer belonged to France; that 
the French king, Louis the Well-Beloved, had given 
away one of his fairest provinces. Still the French 
Creoles did not receive any message from their king, 
and so they hoped and prayed that it was all a 
mistake, and that they should continue to live 
under the flag of France. Great was their grief, 
therefore, when in October, 1764, the French gov- 
ernor in Louisiana received a letter from the King 



REVOLUTION OP 1768. 231 

of France, telling him that, two years before, the 
province of Louisiana had been given to the King 
of Spain and that as soon as the Spanish governor 
arrived, he should be allowed to take possession of 
it in the name of his Catholic Majesty, as the King 
of Spain liked to be called. All the Creoles were 
filled with grief at this dreadful news. There could 
now be no doubt about the truth of it. Without 
asking them whether the^^ wished to change kings 
or not, their own beloved Louis had given away 
their country to the King of Spain. Of course, if 
they wished to leave Louisiana and go to France, 
they could do so, but if they remained, as they all 
wished to do, they must swear to obey the King of 
Spain and cease to be called Frenchmen. Besides 
the laws would be changed, and the rule of Spain, 
they knew, would be much harder to bear than 
that of France. Perhaps, however, they might per- 
suade their king to take back a gift for which he 
had received nothing in return. So a great meeting 
was held in New Orleans, and every parish was 
asked to send its best men. After listening to a 
noble speech from one of the members, this assem- 
bly chose John Milhet, a rich merchant of New 
Orleans, and sent him to France to tell the king 
how grieved the Creoles were to hear that Louisiana 
had been given to Spain, and to beg him to take 
back the province and be its king once more. 



232 STORlEi^ FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Milliet sailed away to France, and as he knew no- 
body at court, he went to see Bienville, the founder 
of New Orleans, who was still alive at the great 
age of eighty-six. Bienville said he understood the 
feelings of the Creoles, and would do everything in 
his power to help them to remain under the rule of 
France. So he went with Milhet to call on the 
Duke of Choiseul, who was secretary of state to the 
king and who could introduce visitors at court. 
But they soon found out that Choiseul, who had 
made the treaty with Spain, did not wish the king 
to take back Louisiana, and was unwilling to let 
them even speak with his majesty. So Milhet had 
to write home that he could do nothing in Paris 
for those who had sent him, but that he would re- 
main a while with the hope that Choiseul might 
change his mind. 

The Coming of Ulloa. 

The Spaniards have always been famous for 
'^putting off until tomorrow what might be done 
today," and so it was in this case. For six months 
after Milhet sailed for France, nothing was heard 
from the Spaniards, and the Creoles began to hope 
that they were never coming to take Louisiana. 
Finally, however, a letter came from the new Span- 
ish governor, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Avhicli said that 



THE COMING OF ULLOA. 233 

he would soon arrive in New Orleans to take pos- 
session of Louisiana in the name of the Si)anish 
king. On the 5tli of March, 1765, his vessel an- 
chored at the levee in New Orleans, and the Creoles 
thought it a bad sign that when he landed a great 
thunder storm burst over the city, and flooded the 
streets with water. The inhabitants were not glad 
to see him, but they received him with proper 
respect, and waited with interest to see what he was 
going to do. And certainly his behavior was ve^y 
queer. He did not show any orders from the king, 
his master, nor take possession of the province in a 
public manner. The French governor, M. Aubry, 
was always very polite and ready to serve him; so 
he gave orders to the police through xA.ubry and 
even made rules for the trade of the province 
through the same person. The reason he behaved 
in this manner seems to have been that he had 
brought with him only ninety soldiers, and he did 
not think these were enough to rule the province 
with. There were a number of French troops in 
Louisiana and he invited these to serve under him, 
but they declared that they had already served their 
terms and that they did not wish to serve under 
any king but the King of France. x\s Ulloa could 
not force them to serve the King of Spain, he de- 
cided to w^ait for troops from Spain, and then take 
public possession of Louisiana. 



234 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

After he had been in New Orleans some months, 
he left the city and went down to a lonely fort 
called Balize, near the mouth of the Mississippi. 
Here, surrounded by marshes and bitten by 
mosquitoes, he remained for seven months. Part 
of the time he spent in building a strong Spanish 
fort, upon which he spent over |100,000. Besides 
this, two curious things happened at the Balize. 
The first was that Aubry came down from New 
Orleans to see Ulloa, and while he was there, UUoa 
asked him to sign a paper transferring Louisiana 
to the Spanish King. Aubry agreed to do this, 
and Ulloa promised to raise the Spanish flag at the 
Balize the next morning. When the next morning 
came, Ulloa had changed his mind and had decided 
to wait for the Spanish troops before raising the 
flag. When Aubry returned to New Orleans, he 
did not tell the Creoles what he had done, but wrote 
an account of it to the King of France, just as Ulloa 
had done to his king. All this secrecy was to do a 
great deal of harm a little later on. Soon after the 
return of Aubry, the news of a second strange 
happening came up to New Orleans. A marriage 
had taken place at the Balize and Ulloa was the 
bridegroom. There was great surprise at this; for 
Ulloa was fifty-one years old, and no one thought 
that he had gone to the Balize to meet a bride. The 



THE DEPARTURE OP ULLOA. 235 

lady whom he had married was the beautiful 
Marchioness of Abrado, a rich Peruvian, whom he 
had courted in her owm country, and who had come 
all the way to Louisiana to marry him. After the 
marriage, Ulloa brought his wife up to New Orleans 
to spend the honeymoon, but the Creoles, who had 
learned to dislike him for the manner in which he 
treated them, did not welcome his wife, and Ulloa 
was much displeased. If he had been a wise gover- 
nor, he would have seen that the way to win the 
favor of the Creoles was to be frank and open with 
them. Instead of doing this, he raised the Spanish 
flag at some of the posts in Louisiana and sent his 
ninety soldiers to them, while at New Orleans he 
left the French flag flying. Even Aubry, who was 
trying in every way to win his favor, wrote to 
France : "I command for the King of France, and, 
at the same time, I govern the colony as if it 
belonged to the King of Spain. It is not a pleasant 
task to govern a province which for three years has 
not known whether it is French or Spanish, and 
which, until the Spaniards take possession, has 
really no master." 

The Departure of Ulloa. 

The proud Creoles became very indignant when 
they saw that Spain did not send over any troops, 
as if Louisiana were not worth the trouble; and 



236 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

some of the chief men among them began a plot to 
get rid of the Spaniards altogether. One of these 
men was Jean Milhet, who had now returned from 
France, where he had never been able to see the 
king. The others were Lafreniere, the eloquent 
attorney-general ; DeMasan, an ex-captain of infan- 
try; De Noyan, and his brother Bienville, both 
nephews of the founder of New Orleans; Marquis, 
formerly an officer in a Swiss regiment; De. Bois- 
blanc, a councillor; Doucet, a lawyer; Joseph Mil- 
het, a merchant ; Caresse, a merchant ; Joseph Vil- 
lere, an officer from the "German Coast" above 
New Orleans; Petit and Poupet, merchants; and 
Foucault, the intendant of the colony. 

These men used to meet at the house of a Madame 
Pradel, just outside of the old cit}-, where they 
thought themselves safe from discovery.* Bienville 
and Masan were sent over to Pensacola, which then 
belonged to England, to ask aid of the English gov- 
ernor. But this governor thought that if the 
Louisiana colony were helped to revolt against 
Spain, the American colonies might be encouraged 
to rise up against England (as they did a few years 
later) , and so he refused to help the Louisianians to 
free themselves from Spain. As they could get no 
help from England, the Louisianians now decided 

* The Pradel house stood where the Cotton Exchange now Is. 



THE DEPARTURE OF ULLOA. 237 

to help themselves. Six hundred of the chief men of 
the colony signed a petition to the Superior Council 
in New Orleans, asking that Ulloa be forced to 
leave Louisiana in three days. After listening to 
two eloquent speeches from Lafreniere, the council 
decided that as Ulloa had shown no orders from his 
king, he had no right to be governor in Louisiana, 
and that he must depart in three days. A thousand 
people had gathered in Jackson Square (then the 
Place d'Armes) to hear what the council would do. 
As soon as the news was given out, a white flag was 
run up in the square, and every one cried: "Long 
live the King of France! Long live Louis, the 
Well-Beloved !'' 

Ulloa and his wife saw that they should have to 
go, and so they went on board a ship at the levee 
and made ready to sail the next day. But that 
night there was a- wedding in New Orleans. Some 
young men, returning from the wedding feast, saw 
Ulloa's ship, and in a spirit of mischief, they cut 
the ropes and it floated down the river. It was 
finally stopped by those on board; but the follow- 
ing day Ulloa took the hint and sailed away to 
Havana. When he reached that city, he found a 
body of troops and a large sum of money, which 
the King of Spain was at last sending over to 
Louisiana. But it was too late. Ulloa feared to 



238 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

return to New Orleans; and after resting a while 
at Havana^ he sailed away to Spain, where he told 
the king of the wicked revolt of the Louisiana col- 
ony. Thus the colony was rid for a while of the 
Spanish government, but the King of Spain was 
very angry, and was resolved to make the Louis- 
ianians suffer for their conduct. 

In the meantime the colonists were wondering 
what was best for them to do. They finally decided 
to send two more messengers to France to beg at 
the foot of the throne that Louis XV. would take 
back the province and keep out the Spaniards. So 
Charles Le Sassier and St. Lette sailed away to 
France to carry the petition of the colonists. But 
now the aged Bienville was dead, and the Due de 
Choiseul was as decided as ever not to let them get 
the ear of the king. St. Lette stayed in France, but 
Le Sassier came back, as Milhet had done, and 
brought the sad news that the French King would 
give no aid. Deserted on all sides, the colonists 
thought of declaring their independence, as the 
American colonies did some seven years later, and 
of forming a republic on the banks of the Missis- 
sippi. But Louisiana at this time contained only 
about 6,000 white inhabitants, and so small a repub- 
lie could not resist for a day the powerful army of 
Spain. There w^as nothing to do except to wait and 
see what the Spanish King would do. 



THE DEATH OF THE PATRIOTS. 239 

The Death op the Patriots. 

One morning in July, six months after Ulloa had 
sailed away, the news reached New Orleans that a 
new Spanish governor, Don xllexandro O'Reilly, 
with a force of several thousand men, had arrived 
at the Balize and was coming up the river to take 
possession of Louisiana. 

Some of the Creoles prepared to resist the Span- 
iards, but the wiser heads thought it would be use- 
less, and so Lafreniere, Jean Milhet, and Marquis 
went down the river to meet O'Reilly and to ex- 
plain to him why Ulloa had been driven out of the 
colony. The new governor invited them to dinner 
on board his ship, and listened politely to their 
speeches. 

On the 18th of August, 1769, O'Reilly reached the 
city. All the French troops and the militia were 
drawn up in the Place d'Armes, and, placing him- 
self at their head, Aubry marched out to the levee 
to meet the new governor. Bridges were thrown 
from the Spanish ships to the levee, and 3,000 Span- 
ish troops in full uniform landed and formed in 
regular columns along the sides of the square. 
When the two governors met, O'Reilly announced 
his name and rank. He then asked Aubry to read 
to the people the orders of the Spanish King. This 
was done, and Aubry spoke to the people, saying: 



240 STOKIES FiiOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

^'Louisiana is now ceded to the Spanish crown. 
Prom this moment you are subjects of his Most 
Catholic Majesty, and I release you from the oath 
which bound you to the King of France." 

The Creoles kept silence, but the Spanish soldiers 
fired their muskets and shouted, "Long live the 
King of Spain ! " while the heavy guns of the ships 
fired salutes. After the keys of the city had been 
handed over to O'Reilly the two governors and their 
staffs entered the cathedral and listened to a 
solemn "Te Deum," sung in honor of these import- 
ant events. 

The Creoles now thought the governor had for- 
given all that had been done in the past; especially 
as, on the following da^^, he gave a great dinner and 
invited some of the chiefs of the revolution to dine 
with him. But in this they were to be sadly dis- 
appointed. On the very day of the dinner party, 
he asked Aubrj- to give him the names of those who 
had led the people in driving out Ulloa, and to tell 
him all the details of the affair. Aubry, who wished 
to win favor with O'Reilly, now acted in the mean- 
est manner. He did not try to excuse his country- 
men, as we should expect, but described them as the 
most wicked of men. He even gave the names of 
those who had led the revolt. On the day after, 
O'Reilly invited the greater number of these to the 



THE DEATH OF THE PATRIOTS. 241 

fine house which he had taken as his residence. At 
the same time, he gave orders that some of his sol- 
diers should surround the building. When his vis- 
itors arrived, he asked them to step into his sitting- 
room. As soon as they had done so, he said to 
them: "The Spanish nation is respected through- 
out the world. Louisiana is the only country which 
is lacking in proper sentiments towards that na- 
tion. The King of Spain is displeased at the writ- 
ings which have come from the colony and at the 
insult offered to Ulloa. I have been commanded 
by his Catholic Majesty to arrest and judge, ac- 
cording to the laws, the authors of this rebellion. 
You must surrender your swords and consider 
yourselves my prisoners. All your goods must be 
given up to the king, but help will be given to your 
wives and children." 

Those who were arrested were Lafreniere, 
N,oyan, De Masan, Marquis, DeBoisblanc, Doucet, 
Joseph and John Milhet, Caresse, Petit, Poupet, 
and Foucault. Another name sent to O'Reilly by 
Aubry was that of Villere, but he was absent on his 
plantation. When O'Eeilly came to New Orleans, 
Villere thought of taking refuge among the En- 
glish, but he was persuaded, it is said, by a letter 
from Aubry to come down to New Orleans. Here 
he was immediately arrested and placed on board 



242 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

ship. There are different accounts of his death. 
The truth seems to be that he made up his mind to 
escape, and crying out ^^Villere was not born to die 
on a scaffold," he tried to break through his guards. 
One of them, however, ran a bayonet through the 
prisoner's thigli, and Villere fell upon the deck, 
wounded and furious wth rage. A few days later 
he died. Another rather doubtful story is that 
while he was a prisoner, his wife came out in a 
small boat to visit him, but instead of allowing 
her to see him, the Spanish guards threw down to 
her the bloody shirt of her husband.* 

It was hinted to Noyan, who was the nephew of 
the great Bienville, that if he wished to escape, the 
Spanish governor would permit it, but he had the 
noble spirit of his uncle, and refused to desert his 
companions. 

The day for the trial of the prisoners was soon 
fixed. They were tried by judges, as was the cus- 
tom in such cases, without jury and without any 
lawyers to defend them. Eleven were found guilty. 
Six of them were sent to Havana and shut up in 
Moro Castle, while Lafreniere, Noyan, Caresse, 
Marquis, and Joseph Milhet, as chiefs of the rebel- 
lion, were to be led to the gallows, with ropes 
around their necks and mounted on asses, and there 
to be hanged. 

*The son of Villere was afterwai-d governor of Louisiana. 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 243 

All the Creoles wept over the sad fate of these 
patriots, and prayed O'Keilly to spare their lives. 
But nothing could move him. He declared that 
they must die; but as the hangman of the colony 
was a negro and no white man could be found to do 
the work, he agreed that they should be shot in- 
stead of hanged. Accordingly they Avere taken to a 
little square near the old Ursuline Convent on 
Chartres street. Here the sentence of death was 
read to them. Then, refusing to have their eyes 
bandaged, they faced the guns of the soldiers. The 
nuns praying with the families of the condemned in 
the convent near by heard the reports of the 
muskets. All was over. 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 



Jefferson and Napoleon. 

Up to the time when the first Spanish explorers 
wandered into the country of the Mississippi, it had 
always been the home of the red man, but after the 
arrival of the white man there came many changes. 
The far-stretching valley of the great river was 



244 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

claimed and claimed again by different countries in 
Europe, given away, and traded off and sold by 
them before it all passed at last into the hands of 
its next-door neighbor and natural owner, the 
United States. Only the United States was strong 
enough and near enough to hold on to Louisiana, 
to search out all the secrets of its woods and 
streams and plains, and to people it with men and 
women who would make it prosper like the other 
parts of the United States. 

^^Ve have seen that the Spanish explorers made 
no .settlements, and it was the French, who 
many years afterwards discovered Louisiana anew 
and named and claimed it for the King of France, 
that were the first to build houses and towns, and 
make Louisiana the home of white men. Louisiana 
is French by birth, and though she is now a good 
and true American, many of her people will always 
be French by nature and French at heart. But only 
for eighty years, we must remember, was Louis- 
iana under the French flag, and even then France 
knew little of the great land she claimed, beyond 
the small settlements that were scattered along the 
coasts and rivers. 

The old Louisiana first named and claimed by 
France was all the vast country which is watered 
by the Mississippi and its branches. You see on 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 245 

the map how this takes in the greater part of the 
United States, reaching from Canada to the Gulf 
of Mexico and from the Alleghanies to the Eocky 
Mountains. It is about fourteen hundred miles 
from north to south, and the same from east to 
west, and more than twenty of our states and ter- 
ritories were cut from it, either partly or wholly. 
All this country and more besides France lost in 
the year 1762. In the great war between France and 
England, which lasted seven years, you remember 
France was beaten, and had to give up to England 
all that part of Louisiana lying east of the Missis- 
sippi, and then, for fear England would help herself 
to the rest, which France was now too weak to de- 
fend, the French King made haste to give this, also, 
to his cousin, the King of Spain. So Louisiana not 
only changed owners, but was cut in two, and the 
part that was given to Spain alone kept the name of 
Louisiana. But this was much the greater part. 
It took in all the country west of the Mississippi 
River, across to the Rocky Mountains, up to Can- 
ada, and down to the Gulf ; and also that land east 
of the river called the Isle of Orleans. This Isle of 
Orleans has always been a most important part of 
Louisiana^' It was then bounded on the west by the 
Mississippi, on the north and east by the Iberville 
River — (which has since been closed) — by Lake 



246 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Maurepas, and Lake Pontcliartrain ; and on the 
south by Lake Borgne, and the Gulf of Mexico. On 
it was New Orleans, Avhere there lived then most of 
the white people in that part of the world; and as 
it reached down to the Gulf it gave to Spain the 
vrhole mouth of the old Father of Waters. 

We find it hard to remember, at present, all that 
our big river meant to the Indians and the early 
settlers. N^w we have roads and railroads through 
all the country, but then through the West there 
were no roads except the rivers; and, as all the 
great rivers between the Alleghanies and the 
Rocky Mountains flow into the Mississippi, all this 
wide country had no way to the sea except through 
the mouth of the Mississippi. 

Into the mouth of the Mississippi and up to New 
Orleans came Spanish ships, bringing from Europe 
oil and wine, and cottons, and woolens, and silks, 
and tools, and all the other things that the colonists 
needed, but were not yet able to make or raise for 
themselves. On the Mississippi, and on the long 
branch rivers to the east and west, there were 
every year more people and new settlements; and 
every year more and more boats came floating down 
the river loaded with lumber, and furs, and corn, 
and tobacco, which the colonists brought down to 
exchange for the things that came to New Orleans 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 247 

in the ships. Of course, the boatmen must have 
some place where they could land and store their 
goods, and trade with the merchants from the ships 
— what is called a "place of deposit." 

New Orleans was the place of deposit for all the 
river trade. She was close enough to the sea and 
had deep enough water to let the ocean ships come 
up and land, as thej^ do now at her wharves. This 
made New Orleans, from the first, a busy town, and 
each year the trade between the boats and the ships 
grew larger and brisker. 

For some years all went pretty well for the 
American colonists who lived on the east of the 
Mississippi. Spain hated England, and during the 
Revolutionary War she did everything to help the 
Americans. But Spain also disliked republics, and 
after the United States w^on their freedom, in 1783, 
she made more and more trouble for the American 
boatmen who came trading down to New Orleans. 
These Westerners, who lived along the Mississippi 
and its branches, were, as you know, a brave and 
adventurous race of men. They were determined 
that New Orleans should belong to the United 
States, and, as Spain was unwilling to sell it, they 
were ready at a word to swarm down and drive out 
the Spaniards and seize the city. Still the Ameri- 
can government believed that its river trade was 



248 STORIES FliOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

in no real danger. Spain was a weak country, and 
the United States* could always force her to keep 
the river open. 

But in. the year 1801, came news from Europe 
that piade the American President decide that New 
Orleans must be owned by the United States. It 
was whispered that Louisiana had again changed 
hands, Spain had given it back to France. 

France was no longer the crippled country that 
had been forced to give up Louisiana. There had 
come from an island to the south of France a little 
cadet named N'apoleon Bonaparte, who in a few 
years had 'climbed to the head of the French army, 
and had grown to be one of the greatest generals 
the world has ever known. With Napoleon to lead 
her army, France was winning every battle she 
chose to tight, and now the French felt strong 
enough to conquer the world. Napoleon wished to 
make France the mightiest of all the nations, and 
he determined to get back for her all the colonies 
that she had lost in the past. As the greatest of 
these was Louisiana, he sent his brother, Lucien, 
down to Spain to persuade the Spanish King to 
give Louisiana back to France. Napoleon had so 
much power that he found it easy to '^persuade" 
the weaker countries of Europe. Through Lucien 
he promised to give Spain some help that she 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 249 

needed, and he also promised that he would not 
let any other nation get possession of Louisiana; 




THOMAS JEFFERSON IN 1803. 

and on these easy terms, Spain gave the whole 
immense colony back to Prance. 

Again the people of Louisiana had changed 



250 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

masters without having a word to say for them- 
selves; but this time they were glad of the change 
that would bring them again under the flag of their 
beloved France. 

But the United States did not feel this jo}^ 
Thomas Jefferson, the President, wrote to Robert R. 
Livingston, the American Minister in France, that 
there was, on the globe, one single spot, the owner 
of which was the natural enemy of the United 
States. This was New Orleans, through which the 
produce of nearly half of the United States must 
pass to market. 

The President knew that France was strong 
enough to make a most uncomfortable neighbor for 
the Western States. She could charge the Ameri- 
can boatmen any price she chose for landing in 
New Orleans, and she might at any moment stop 
the American boats from coming into the lower 
Mississippi. President Jefferson wisely decided 
tliat he would not wait for the trouble to begin, but 
would at once send a special agent oA-er to France, 
and try in ever}^ way to buy New Orleans. He sent 
James ^Mouroe to join Livingston in Paris, and he 
gave these two power to make a bargain with 
Napolex)n. They were to offer two million dollars 
at first, and were allowed to bid as high as ten 
millions for New Orleans and a part of West 
Florida. 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 251 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 

(After painting by Delaroclie.) 



252 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY, 

Napoleon was now the ruler, not only of the 
French Army, but of all Prance. His word was 
the law of the land, and if the Americans could per- 
suade him to sell New Orleans, no one in France 
had power to stop him. There was a kind of legis- 
lature called ^^The Chambers," but it could do 
nothing against Napoleon. 

This was in the year 1803. Napoleon had won 
great battles in Austria and Italy and Egypt; but 
England, the strong old enemy of France, was still 
to fight. Napoleon hated and dreaded England 
more than all the rest of Europe, and he was gath- 
ering all his strength, and all the strength of 
France, for the great battle with England that he 
knew must soon take place. So Jefferson's offer to 
buy New^ Orleans came at a lucky time. In the 
first place. Napoleon needed more money than 
France could afford for his coming fight with Eng- 
land. In the second place, though France fought 
well on land, England was the Queen of the Sea, 
and Napoleon felt sure that as soon as war was 
declared, the English ships would sail over and 
seize Louisiana. Here was a good chance to get 
money for the war, to have the Americans defend 
Louisiana against England, and at the same time 
to make friends with the United States, Avhich was 
growing to be a stronger nation every year. 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 



253 



One day, in the springtime of 1803, Mr. Living- 
ston was making his offers to buy New Orleans to 
Talleyrand, Napoleon's minister, when, to his sur- 
prise, Talleyrand, who up to this time had done his 



l« 


''^E^ 


V 




^ 




B 


* 



ROBERT R. LWINGSTON. 

best to stop the sale, asked suddenly, "How would 
the United States like to have the whole of 
Louisiana?" 

This was more than Mr. Livingston was ready 
to bargain for, but Talleyrand said, "Tf France 
gives up New Orleans, the rest of Louisiana will 
be of little value. What will you give for the whole 
of it? " 



254 



STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 



Livingston and Monroe had not been given the 
right to make such a big purchase, but they saw 
that this was a rare chance for the United States, 
and they were wise enough and bold enough to act 




JAMES MONROE. 

without waiting to hear from home. Nowadays an 
American can cable home from France and get an 
answer the same day, but then it took at least two 
months to hear from America. There was no way 
of sending a word across the ocean, except by sail- 
boats. So Livingston and Monroe, hoping^ that the 
President and the Senate would approve of their 



THE GREAT PURCHASE. 255 

bargain, agreed to take the whole of Louisiana, and 
to pay for it, in all, fifteen million dollars. 

When their treaty, dated April 30, 1803, reached 
home, one month later, there was at first a good deal 
of trouble. Jefferson himself was shocked, as he 
had never dreamed of buying such a whole new 
world. , Some people thought fifteen millions were 
too much to pay for Louisiana ; some thought that 
Louisiana was too big a country for the United 
States to manage ; some feared that the French and 
Spanish Catholics would never make good Ameri- 
can citizens, and some declared that Spain would 
go to war with the United States, and even that 
France would take our money, and then help Spain 
to get back Louisiana. But Jefferson collected and 
sent to Congress many papers, telling of the won- 
ders and riches of Louisiana. Some of these told 
strange stories — of a mountain of solid salt one 
hundred and eighty miles long, of prairie land 
which was too rich to grow trees, and on which 
wandered giant Indians and animals much larger 
than elephants. Finally the people grew accus- 
tomed to the idea of owning Louisiana, the treaty 
was accepted, and the price was paid. 

Just a few months after the people of Louisiana 
heard that Spain had given them to France, they 
learned that France had sold them to the United 



256 



STORIES FROM LOl'ISIAXA HISTORY. 




States. They were grieved and indignant, as they 
perhaps had a right to be, for they did not then see 
that they were to be much better off now than they 
ever had been before. 

As for tlie United States, it has never been sorry 
for its bargain. We bouglit for our fifteen million 
dollars the larger part of the greatest and richest 
valley of the world. We bought a country as big as 
France and Spain and Portugal and Italy and 
Germany and Great Britain all together — more 
than a million square miles, nearly six hundred 
million acres, for about two and a half cents an 
acre. Thougli the exploring parties that were sent 
to find out about the new land did not find the 
mountain of salt and the great animals, they found 
untold wonders and riches. 



THE BATH-TUB SCENE. 2o ( 

The sale of Louisiana was an unpleasant surprise 
to Spain. The King of Spain was very angry to 
find that Napoleon had broken his promise, and 
he warned the United States not to touch Louisi- 
ana. But what could he do, after all? Napoleon 
was too strong for Spain to fight. After thinking 
awhile, therefore, the Spanish King said he would 
make no more trouble, "because of his love for the 
United States." 

And as for Napoleon, he was proud of his sale 
and boasted that he had strengthened forever the 
power of the United States. "I have given Eng- 
land," he said, '^a rival on the seas who will sooner 
or later humble her pride." These words of Napo- 
leon seem to have come true some ten years later; 
for in the war of 1812-15, the Americans fought 
fifteen ship-duels with the English, and won all but 
three of them. 

The Rath-Tub Scene. 

It is said that the French never forgave Napoleon 
for selling Louisiana. His own brothers were very 
much shocked when they first heard of his 
plan, and did all they could to stop the sale. His 
younger brother, Lucien Bonaparte, who had just 
helped to get Louisiana back from Spain, has 
described the scene. He tells how, one evening in 



258 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the month of April, he and his brother Jose^^h met 
to go to the theatre. 

" ^Here you are at last ! ' exclaimed my brother, 
^I was afraid you were not coming. It is a fine time 
to go to the theatre. I come to tell you a piece of 
news which will not make you feel like amusing 
yourself. . . You will not believe it, and yet it is 
true. I give you a thousand guesses ; the General* 
(we still called Napoleon in that way), the General 
wishes to sell Louisiana.' 

" 'Bah! who will buy it from him?^ 

" 'The Americans.' 

''I was thunderstruck for a moment. 'The idea! 
If he could wish it, the Chambersf would not con- 
sent to it.' 

" 'And, therefore, he expects to do without their 
consent. That is what he replied to me when I 
said to him, as you do now, that the Chambers 
would not consent to it.' 

" 'What, he really said that to you? That is a lit- 
tle too much ! But no ; it is imj^ossible. It is a bit 
of brag at your expense . . . . ' 

" 'No, no,' insisted Joseph, 'he spoke very seri- 
ously, and, what is more, he added to me that this 
sale would furnish him the first funds for war.' " 

* Napoleon was now First Consul of France, and had as much power 
as if he were kins. 

tThe legislature of France, 



THE BATH-TUB SCENE. 259 

Lucien and Joseph talked earnestly over the mat- 
ter, and decided that on the next morning they 
would go to see their brother and beg him to give 
up what seemed to them his wild and foolish plan- 

Lucien writes, ^^The eighteen* millions seemed to 
me besides, as I still think them today, a miserable 
and pitiable price." 

"The next morning . . . . " he goes on, "I betook 
myself to the *Tuileries, where I was immediately 
shown up to my brother, who had just got into his 
bath. I found him in excellent humor. He began 
by speaking of the theatre. . .It was almost time 
to leave the bath and .... we had not discussed 
Louisiana any more than we had the year forty. I 
was vexed at it, but the nearer the last moment of 
speaking of it approached, the more I put off doing 
so. The body-servant was already holding the sheet 
prepared to wrap his master in: I was about to 
leave the place when Rustan scratched at the door 
like a cat .... The person for whom Rustan had 
broken his nails. . . .was Joseph. 

" ^Let him come in,' said the First Consul, 'I will 
stay in the water a quarter of an hour longer.' 

"It was known that he liked very much to stay 
there a long time, when there was no pressing busi- 
ness. I had time to make a sign to the new-comer 

•It was fifteen millions. 
-^ I The royal palace where Napoleon lived. 



260 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

that I had not yet spoken of anything, and I saw 
that he was himself embarrassed as to when and 
how. he was to open the subject. . . . 

"All at once the Consul said to Joseph : ^Well, 
brother, so you have not spoken to Lucien?' 

" ^About what?' said Joseph. 

" ^About our plan in regard to Louisiana, you 
know.' 

" ^About yours, my dear brother, you mean? You 
cannot have forgotten that, far from being mine — ' 

" *Come, come, preacher — but I have no need of 
talking about that with you : you are so hard- 
headed. With Lucien I speak more willingly of 
serious matters ; for he knows how to give in to my 
opinion, Lucien does. . . .' 

"Joseph then said to the Consul, rather roughly : 
'Well, you still say nothing of your great plan?' 

" ^Oh ! yes,' said the Consul, ^but it is late, and if 
Lucien will wait for me in my study with you, Mis- 
ter Grumbler, I will join you soon : do me the favor 
to recall my body-servant, for I must leave the bath. 
Know merely, Lucien, that I have decided to sell 
Louisiana to the Americans ' 

"I contented myself with saying, ^Ah! ah!' in a 
tone which was meant to show only a wish to know 
more 

"This seeming indifference made Napoleon say, 



THE BATH-TUB SCENE. 261 

*Well, Joseph, you see! Lucien does not make an 
outcry about that as you do, yet he would almost 
have a right to do so for his part.' 

" ^As for me, I assure you,' replied Joseph, 'that if 
Lucien says nothing, he thinks none the less.' 

a ^Truly? And why should he play the actor with 
mer " 

Lucien answered that it was true that on this 
subject he thought like Joseph. 

"I flatter m3^self,'' he added in a tone which he 
tried to make as little angry as possible, ^'I flatter 
myself that the Chambers will not give their con- 
sent to it." 

Then Lucien's story goes on : 

" *You flatter yourself?' Napoleon said 'That 

is fine in truth'. . . .and at the same time Joseph 
exclaimed, with an air of triumph : 'And I, too, 
flatter myself so, and that is what I told the First 
Consul.' 

" 'And what did I answer you?' said my brother 
pretty sharply, looking at us one after the other, 
as if that the expression of our faces might not 
escape him, 

" 'You answered that you would do without the 
consent of the Chambers : is not that it?' 

" 'Precisely : that is what I have taken the great 
liberty of saying to Mr. Joseph, and what I repeat 
here to Citizen Lucien.' 



262 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

"The discussion, perhaps, would have stopped 
there to our great regret, and we were about to 
start for the door to leave the Consul free to come 
out of his bath ; he had already made a movement 
to do so and his body-servant was still holding his 
sheet spread out, ready to receive his master and to 
dry him by wrapping him in it, when this master, 
changing his mind all at once, said to us loud 
enough to make us turn round : 

" ^And then, gentlemen, think what you please 
about it, but give this affair up as lost to both of 
you; you, Lucien, on account of the sale in itself; 
you, Joseph, because I shall get along without the 
consent of anyone whomsoever, do you under- 
stand?' " 

Lucien felt hurt, he says, at these words of 
Napoleon, and there escaped from him "a smile of 
astonishment,'' which seemed to displease the great 
man in the bath-tub. Joseph, who was Napoleon's 
older brother, was now very angry, and declared 
that he would himself head the party that he knew 
would rise up to stop the sale of Louisiana. 

To this Napoleon only replied by laughing aloud. 
Joseph became redder and redder from anger, and, 
almost stuttering, said : 

"Laugh, laugh, laugh then ! None the less I will 
do what I say, and althougli I do not like to speak 
in public, this time I shall do so." 



tHE BATH-TUB SCENE. 263 

At these words, Napoleon, lifting himself half- 
way out of the bath tub, said that there would never 
be a chance for Joseph to rise up and speak against 
him ; that there would be no discussion, as the sale, 
which was his own idea, was entirely his own affair, 
and would be put through b}^ himself alone: ^'By 
me," he said, "who snap my fingers at your opposi- 
tion.'^ 

Lucien says: "After these words the Consul 
sank down tranquilly in the waves whitened with 
cologne water of his bath tub." 

But Joseph, in the tone of the greatest anger, 
with which his handsome face was aflame, replied 
that in that case Napoleon and all his family had 
better get ready to go into exile, where they would 
surely be sent. 

At this, Napoleon, flying into a fnry, which made 
his face as white as Joseph's anger had made his 
red, cried out: "You are an insolent fellow!" and 
rose suddenly from the water, and as suddenly 
threw himself back with a splash that deluged 
Joseph from head to foot. 

The scene changed and became comic. The sud- 
den bath to his face and his clothes had cooled 
Joseph's anger. He allowed himself to be sponged 
and dried off by the body-servant, who, to Lucien's 
regret, had been a witness of the whole scene, and 



2G4: STUKIES FliOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

who in the end actually fainted away — so overcome 
was lie at seeing tlie anger of such great men. 

Soon after this bath-tub scene, Napoleon sold 
Louisiana to the United States, and the French 
Chambers did not venture to make any objections. 



THE CHANGE OP FLAGS IN NEW 
ORLEANS. 

Before the sale of Louisiana took place, the First 
Consul (Bonaparte) had sent over to New Orleans 
an agent, Mr. Laussat, who a few months later was 
the Commissioner of France to receive the province 
of Louisiana from Spain and to hand it over to the 
United States. So slow was the coming of news in 
those days, when there were no steamboats or tele- 
graph, that Laussat did not hear until near the end 
of July that the rumors were true and that, on the 
30th of April, Louisiana had actually been sold to 
the United States. Laussat was very much aston- 
ished ; he had been sure that Napoleon would keep 
Louisiana and make it a French colony. 

On the 30th of November, a 2:reat crowd assem- 



266 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

bled at Jackson Square, then known as the Place 
cV Amies. In the Cabildo, (now the Supreme Court 
building), just opposite, Laussat, as French Com- 
missioner, met the Spanish Commissioners, Casa 
Calvo and Salcedo. The latter i3laced in Laussat's 
hands the keys of the city, declaring that Louisiana 
now belonged to France, and that all the inhabi- 
tants who wished to be subjects of the French gov- 
ernment were released from their allegiance to the 
King of Spain. The Commissioners then walked 
out onto the gallery to see the change of flags. Amid 
the firing of cannon the Spanish flag came down 
from the tall staff in the square and the French 
"tricolor'' soon waved over the crowd. This would 
have been a very interesting event for the Creoles, 
if they had not known that they would remain 
under the flag of their beloved France only a few 
weeks and then be subject to the government of 
the United States. 

Twenty days later the people assembled in the 
Place d'Armes once more. This time Laussat met in 
the Cabildo the Commissioners of the American 
government, Messrs. Claiborne and Wilkinson. The 
treaty was read, the keys of the city handed to Mr. 
Claiborne, and Laussat declared that Louisiana 
now belonged to the United States. Claiborne made 
an address, in which he told the people that they 



THE CHANGE OF FLAGS IN NEW ORLEANS. 267 



would soon be made full citizens of the United 
States, and in the meantime would be protected in 
their liberty, and property, and religion. Again 
the cannon boomed, and again the flags were 



changed. 



Now 



the French flag came fluttering 




THE CABILDO. 

down and the Stars and Stripes waved in the breeze. 
The Creoles did not cheer the new flag. They had 
not been asked whether they wished to have their 
country sold to the United States, and they did 
not love the flag that had just been placed over 
them. They did not foresee that twelve years later 



268 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

they would be fighting with great bravery and en- 
thusiasm under this very flag. Now they looked 
with a kind of dull curiosity at the soldiers drawn 
up in the Square and at the fall of the flag that was 
dear to them because it seemed to take them back 
to their beloved France.* 



NEW ORLEANS IN 1804. 

A traveller,* who visited New Orleans in 1804, 
has left us some interesting notes on the manners 
and customs of the Crescent City as he saw it at that 
time. ^^Tlie French, Spanish and Americans," he 
tells us, "keep themselves separate in society. The 
Americans assemble much together and the French, 
except in business, keep aloof, though when one vis- 
its them, they are very friendly and agreeable. 
The people are simple in their habits — they indulge 
in no extravagance or expense. They are fond of 
gaiety and dancing, but all is cheaply done. The 

*In December, 1903, the scenes we have described were repeated In 
the Oabildo by the descendants of those who took part in them one 
hundred years before. 

t John F. Watson in "American Pioneer " for May. 1843. The order 
of these notes and the language have been somewhat changed. ' 



NEW ORLEANS IN 1804. 269 

admittance to a ball is half a dollar, and the ladies 
go gratis. The ladies' dresses are mostly of white 
muslin, and sometimes silk of gay colors, but never 
costly, and always neatly and modestly made. 

"Being at the theatre one night when it came on 
to a rain, the wife of the sheriff of New Orleans 
and the daughter of a Spanish captain both pulled 
off their silk stockings and gave them to me to 
carry, and casting the skirts of their gowns over 
their heads, set off home on foot, making merry all 
the way ! The ladies at no time wear caps, turbans, 
or bonnets. No bonnets are ever seen on the 
streets. They cover their hair with a graceful veil. 
They are beautiful in person, in gestures, and in 
action. Nearly all are brunettes. Though none 
have color in their cheeks, none look unhealthy. 
Young ladies do not dare to ride out or to appear 
abroad with young gentlemen ; but ladies frequently 
ride abroad in a chair carriage { volant e ) ,majisigmg 
the horse themselves. They usually drive in a 
gallop ; no trotting is seen. Their volante carriages 
are very ugly. Often mules are driven, and some- 
times horses and mules are driven three or four 
abreast. 

"The boys here never romp or riot in the streets 
at rude play. They all affect long coats and boots, 
even from their earliest boyhood. 



270 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

^^I often see negroes pnt np for sale, and I see ves- 
sels loaded with them for sale also. In the latter 
they are made to dance and seem lively and healthy 
to increase their value. They assemble in great 
numbers on the levee on Sunday and make them- 
selves glad with song, dance, and merriment. ^Light- 
hearted wretches' ; in them the wind indeed seems 
^tempered to the shorn lamb.' They do enjoy them- 
selves. 

"Generally people live upstairs in the large houses 
and rent out the lower part for stores. Many 
houses have no glass lights. None of the streets 
have pavements, and after a rain the black, loamy, 
greasy state of the earth would make sleighing 
easy. On such occasions we all walk on a long line 
of single logs, set at the edge of the footway as the 
water sewer. There is some fun in contending for 
this single walk on wet days. 

"I have never seen or eaten any butter here; few 
persons milk cows, though cattle are plenty and 
cheap. There is no copper coin in circulation ; one 
can't buy anything for less than a six cent piece, 
called a picayune.* Shrimps are much eaten, also 
a dish called gumbo. This last is made of every 
eatable substance, and especially of the shrimps, 
which can be caught at any time at the river side, 
with a small net. 

*This was a Spanish coin worth (Mi cents, 



NEW ORLEANS IN 1804. 271 

"New Orleans has four forts at the four corners 
of the town, and a levee entirely surrounds the 
whole place. The forts in the rear are going to ruin, 
but those in the front (on the river) are guarded by 
soldiers. The first part of January, 1805, three or 
four flatboats arrived from Charleston (West Vir- 
ginia) ; they were twelve weeks in coming. They 
had taken out half their cargoes to get over the 
falls of the Ohio. By their early arrival they sold 
their flour at |12.50 a barrel." 

Our traveller also describes the charivari, a 
curious form of amusement, borrowed from France, 
which he witnessed in New Orleans: "Masquer- 
ades," he says, "have ceased in New Orleans for 
eight or nine years, but sherri-varries (charivaries) 
are still practiced. They consist in mobbing the 
house of a widow* when she remarries, and de- 
manding a gift for the public. When Madame 
Don Andres Almonester was married, the affair 
lasted three whole days, and brought in crowds 
from the country. The house was mobbed by thous- 
ands of persons, shouting at the tops of their 
voices. Many were in disguise dresses and masks; 
hundreds were on horseback ; and all had some kind 
of noisy musical instrument, as old kettles, shovels 
and tongs, and clanging metals. Some of the 
crowd drew along in a cart effigies of the widow's 

* Men were also charivaried. 



2<2 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

former husband and of her present husband. The 
former husband's effigy was lying in a coffin, while 
the widow, represented by a living person, sat near 
it. As Madame did not receive this rude mob 
very courteously, she became unpopular and was 
forced to make a public gift of three thousand dol- 
lars in solid coin for an out-door mass." 



THE FIEST STEAMBOAT ON THE 
MISSISSIPPI. 

At the beginning of the year 1812, no steamboat 
had ever appeared at New Orleans, but on the 12th 
of January, in that year, there was great excite- 
ment in the Crescent City. A vessel run by steam 
had come down the river from Pittsburg, Pennsyl- 
vania, and was to be seen at the levee. A curious, 
wondering crowd assembled to view the strange ob- 
ject. Before this time all the products of the West 
had been brought down to the city in flatboats, keel 
boats, and barges. The flatboats were so large and 
so hard to steer that when they reached New 
Orleans they were broken up as soon as they were 



FIRST STEAMBOAT ON MISSISSIPPI. 273 

unloaded, and sold for old lumber. The keel boats 
were long, with sharp ends, and when they were 
covered over with a rough shed roof, were called 
"barges." "Keels" and "barges" could be taken 
back up the river with long poles and heavy oars, 
but it was slow, hard work. 

Eobert Fulton, who some years before, ha.d built 
a steamboat to run on the Hudson in New York, de- 
cided to make a model for a steamboat which should 
trade between Natchez and New Orleans. The task 
of building the boat and the engine was to be super- 
intended by Mr. Nicholas J. Roosevelt, a well 
known navigator of that day.* First of all Mr. 
Roosevelt and his wife floated down the Ohio and 
the Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans on 
a flatboat. On this trip he examined these rivers, 
their currents and their channels, and even pur- 
chased a lot of coal, which he had piled up on the 
banks at certain stations for the steamboat which 
he had not yet built, but which he felt sure he 
would build. The old boatmen on the Mississippi 
told him that a steamboat would be lost in the 
whirling eddies and currents of a great river like 
the Mississippi; but Mr. Roosevelt thought he 
knew better. At any rate, he was determined to 
make the trial. 

*He was the grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. 



274 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

In 1811, at Pittsburg, he began to build the new 
boat. It was 116 feet long and 20 feet wide. It* cost 
about 138,000. ]Men were sent out into the forest to 
cut the timber and to float it down to the shipyard. 
As soon as the vessel was completed, it was 
christened ''The New Orleans," and in September, 
1811, it was ready to start on its trip to the city 
after which it had been named. The only pas- 
sengers were to be Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt. As the 
voyage was looked upon as dangerous, especially 
the ''shooting" of the falls of the Ohio, the friends 
of Mrs. Roosevelt tried to dissuade her from going ; 
but she was glad to share the dangers of her hus- 
band. Besides the passengers, there were the cap- 
tain, the engineer, a pilot, six sailors, several ser- 
vants, and a big New Foundland dog. 

When all was ready, the steamer started on its 
long voyage amid the shouts of a great crowd of 
spectators, who cried Godspeed to the passengers. 
On the second day they reached Cincinnati, and 
were greeted by nearly all the inhabitants of the 
place. "You are as good as your word," some one 
cried out to Mr. Roosevelt ; "you have visited us in a 
steamboat ; but we see you for the last time. Your 
boat may go down the river, but as for coming up, 
the very idea is absurd." 

At midnight, October 1st, the boat reached 
Louisville, and the roar of the steam escaping 



FIRST STEAMBOAT ON MISSISSIPPI. 275 

aroused the town. Some said that the comet which 
had been seen in the heavens for some months had 
suddenly fallen into the river opposite the town. 
When it was known that the long-expected steam- 
boat had arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt had a 
great dinner given in their honor. Unfortunately it 
was found that the water in the Ohio was so low 
that it would not float ^^The New Orleans" over the 
falls. So a stop of two months had to be made, 
while waiting for rain. Finally the up-country 
rains swelled the waters of the river until it was 
found that at the falls the channel was five inches 
deeper than was necessary to allow the boat to pass. 
The channel, however, was very narrow, and the 
boat could not be steered straight unless it was 
driven faster than the current. So under a full 
head of steam, while all on board held their breath, 
the little steamer was run at headlong speed 
through the foaming waters. Luckily no accident 
happened, and the vessel glided safely into the still 
waters below the falls. Just here, while it was 
resting at anchor, there came the shock of an earth- 
quake. The water was so much shaken that some 
persons on board were made seasick. But the 
anchor was drawm up and the voyage was contin- 
ued. 

One day the Chickasaw Indians, who were 
still living in Tennessee, seeing the vessel passing, 



276 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

sent out a large canoe full of warriors to pursue it. 
There was much excitement on board ; for the canoe 
at first equalled ''The New Orleans" in speed. But 
muscle could not endure like steam ; gradually the 
Indians were left behind in the race — much to the 
joy of the passengers. But more trouble was in 
store for the vessel and her crew. It had been hoped 
that the shock felt at the falls of the Ohio was the 
last. But this was the year in which there was a 
series of earthquakes, the most terrible ever remem- 
bered in the Mississippi Valley. Chimneys and even 
log cabins were shaken down. Many people in Mis- 
souri were so much frightened that they ran away 
from their homes, leaving behind them their cattle, 
their horses, and all other belongings. Some rushed 
to the bank as "The New Orleans" passed, and 
begged to be taken on board, but Mr. Roosevelt had 
so little food that he was obliged to refuse. Some- 
times there came a great rumbling noise like thun- 
der and this would be followed by frightful shocks. 
Great cracks appeared in the earth, some of which 
were four miles long and four feet deep. The chan- 
nel of the river was so much changed in places by 
the movement of the earth that the pilot often be- 
came confused and could not steer the boat prop- 
erly. Where he expected to find deep water, he 
found great roots and stumps rising out of the 
water too shallow to float the vessel. As immense 



FIRST STEAMBOAT ON MISSISSIPPI. 277 

trees were often thrown into the water by the 
shocks, it became dangerous to tie up to the bank. 
One evening the boat was anchored at the foot of a 
little island ; in the morning the captain was aston- 
ished to find that though the anchor had held, the 
island had disappeared, and the water was pouring 
over the spot. 

All these incidents made the voyage one of '^terror 
and anxiety." And very happy were Mr. and Mrs. 
Boosevelt when they reached Natchez, in Missis- 
sippi, where they found rest and comforts. 

As the boat approached the bank, the current 
swept it by, and it was found necessary to put on 
more steam to breast the current and make the 
landing. When ^'The New Orleans" began slowly to 
ascend the river, an old negro on the bank cried 
out : ''By golly, ole Mississippi got her massa dis 
time." 

After stopping a while at Natchez the vessel 
steamed down without accident to the Crescent 
City, having made the trip from Pittsburg, not 
counting the time lost at Louisville, in 259 hours. 
As ''The New Orleans" had thus opened the way, 
other steamboats were put on the Mississippi and 
they took the place of the slow, tedious old flat- 
boats.* 

♦Condensed from the interesting nari'atlve in Claiborne's " Missis- 
sippi," pp.537-45. 



THE LAFITTES. 



On the coast of Louisiana, almost due south of 
New Orleans, we find the large bay of Barataria, 
and just in front of it, on the Gulf, is the little 
island of Grande Terre. On the innerside of this 
island the old maps of Louisiana show a place 
called "Spiugglers' Anchorage." One hundred 
years ago this used to be the meeting place of a 
band of reckless men, who were said by some to be 
mere smugglers and by others to be pirates. They 
had a number of swift vessels, which sailed about in 
the Gulf and captured Spanish ships. The goods 
from these ships, often of great value, were brought 
to Grande Terre, where they were sold at a low 
price to the traders that came in large numbers 
from Donaldsonville, from New Orleans, and other 
parts of the state. The Baratarians, as they were 
called, began to grow rich from this trade. They 
did not find much difficulty in capturing merchant 
vessels, with their armed cruisers, and they never 
paid any duties to the United States government 
on the goods that they sold. On one occasion, when 
the inspector of revenue was sent down to Grande 



THE LAFITTES. 279 

Terre to look into the matter and stop any illegal 
trade, two of his men were wounded by the Bara- 
tarians and he himself was killed. Moreover, the 
Congress of the United States in 1808 had passed 
a law that no more negro slaves should be brought 
into this country. Yet whenever the Baratarians 
captured a ship containing slaves, they sold them 
at Grande Terre like any other goods. 
, The captain of the band of smugglers was Jean 
Lafitte, who was assisted in his unlawful business 
by his brother Pierre. They were Frenchmen by 
birth, and it is said that when they came to New 
Orleans from France they first took up the trade of 
blacksmithing, and soon getting tired of this slow 
road to wealth, they moved down to Barataria Bay. 
Other writers say that they were never blacksmiths 
themselves, but that they had a friend who was a 
blacksmith and who acted as their agent in New 
Orleans. 

Jean Lafitte, himself, was a dark, handsome man, 
brave and even reckless in all his acts. He was 
much liked by his men and his orders were obeyed 
as if he had been a king. He claimed that he had 
a right to attack Spanish ships because the state of 
Carthagena, in South America, whicli had revolted 
from Spain, had given him a commission to use a 
flag and to fit out privateers against that country, 



280 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 




JKAN I.AFITTE. 



THE LAFITTES. 281 

His enemies said that he captured the ships not 
only of Spain, but also of other nations, and that 
he was, therefore, a pirate. Lafitte denied this, but 
there seems to have been much truth in the accusa- 
tion. What Lafitte could not deny, however, was 
that he was bringing his prizes into a port of the 
United States and was selling goods without paying 
the duties. All this was contrary to the laws of the 
United States. It was the duty of the Federal gov- 
ernment to put a stop to these unlawful acts, but 
the government acted slowly, especially after 1812, 
when the war with Great Britain began. The gov- 
ernor of Louisiana, W. C. C. Claiborne, tried to 
get the State Legislature to authorize him to raise 
a company to assist the revenue officers in putting 
down the Lafittes, but the Legislature decided to 
leave the matter to the Federal government. The 
governor became so indignant at the acts of the Bar- 
atarians that he offered |500 reward for the cap- 
ture of Jean Lafitte on the ground that he had re- 
captured some goods seized by the revenue officers. 
No one seems to have tried to win the reward, and 
Lafitte was impudent enough to announce that he 
would give |15,000 to any one who would bring the 
governor to him as a prisoner. He and his captains 
boldly walked the streets of New Orleans, and for 
a while no one seems to have been rash enough to 



282 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

lay hands on them. But they were carrying things 
too far. Pierre Lafitte was finally captured and 
thrown into the calaboose in New Orleans, while 
preparations were made by the Federal government 
to send troops to Grande Terre and break up the 
nest of smugglers. 

And now a remarkable thing was to happen. The 
war with Great Britain was then being carried on 
actively, and in September, 1814, the British fleet 
approached the coast of Louisiana with the inten- 
tion of landing a force to capture New Orleans 
and to seize the lower Mississippi Valley. One day 
the Baratarians were surprised to see a British 
brig standing off the coast near Grande Terre. 
When Jean Lafitte started out in a boat to see what 
she wanted, she sent to the shore a pinnace with 
British colors and a flag of truce. In the pinnace 
were some English officers, who brought a letter 
addressed to ''Mr. Lafitte, Commandant at Bara- 
taria," and some orders issued by the senior officer 
of the British fleet. The orders declared that some 
British merchant vessels had been taken and sold by 
the inhabitants of Barataria, and that unless they 
vrere paid for, the whole settlement at Grande 
Terre should be destroyed. "In case, however, the 
Baratarians were willing to assist Great Britain in 
her just war against the United States and would 



THE LAFITTES. 283 

employ their armed vessels in such service, they 
would be forgiven what they had done, and would 
be well rewarded." The letter to Lafitte himself 
was very polite. It told him that if he and ^^his 
brave followers" would enter the service of Great 
Britain, lands would be given to them after the war 
was over, and that he himself should have the rank 
of captain and a present of |30,000. One of the 
officers, moreover, tried to persuade him to accept 
these tempting offers by reminding him that Lafitte 
himself had been declared an outlaw by the Amer- 
ican government and that his brother was at that 
moment lying, loaded with chains, in the jail at 
New Orleans. 

Some men, under the circumstances, would 
have gladly gone over to the enemy, but it 
was not so with Lafitte. He asked for time to pre- 
pare an answer, and sent his visitors on board their 
brig. After waiting in vain for some days they be- 
gan to fear that Lafitte was laying a trap for them, 
and they sailed away. In the meantime Lafitte had 
hurried off a letter to New Orleans, addressed to a 
member of the Legislature, in which he said that, 
though he had been outlawed by his adopted coun- 
try, that country was still very dear to him, and 
that he wished to serve it. He enclosed the letter 
he had received from the British, and a few days 
later he wrote again telling how the British in- 



284 STOlilES FKOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

tended to attack Louisiana. At the same time ne 
wrote to the governor asking to be taken back as a 
citizen, and offering to fight against the British if 
Claiborne would forget what he had done in the 
past. ^'I am a stray sheep w-ishing to return to the 
sheepfold." He added that he had been a smuggler, 
but never a pirate. Governor Claiborne, not wish- 
ing to answer his letter without asking advice, 
called together the oflScers of the militia and some 
officers of the navy, who were in New Orleans. The 
governor was so much pleased with the letter which 
the outlaw had written to him that he voted to 
accept the services of Lafitte and his men in the 
defense of Louisiana. But the majority of the 
officers voted to have no friendly dealings with the 
Baratarians and to try to capture the whole band. 
So Commodore Patterson, of the navy, who was 
present at the meeting, collected a strong force of 
soldiers and swooped down on the camp of the 
smugglers. The Baratarians, hearing that he was 
coming, and fearing to meet his soldiers, had al- 
ready disappeared in the winding bayous, but the 
Commodore brought back to the city a quantity of 
rich plunder, which he had found at Grande Terre. 
Six weeks later there arrived in New Orleans a 
famous soldier. He was feeble in health, and 
scarcely able to eat anything, except a little ricc^ 
but full of energy and patriotism. Jt w^ General 



THE LAFITTES. 285 

Andrew Jackson, who had come to defend New Or- 
leans against the British. Now was Lafitte^s 
chance. While the Creoles were flocking to the 
assistance of Jackson, Jean Lafitte suddenly ap- 
peared at Jackson's headquarters one day, and of- 
fered the services of himself and his followers. 
Jackson had heard of the Baratarians, and had once 
called them robbers and pirates. But now that he 
found himself face to face with the daring "robber 
and pirate," he seems to have been pleased with the 
manly air of Lafitte. He learned, moreover, that 
the Baratarians had arms and flints, which he was 
very much in need of, and which they were willing 
to hand over to him. So he agreed to accept the 
offer of Lafitte and promised him that if the Bara- 
tarians behaved well in the war, he would ask the 
President of the United States to pardon them. Ac- 
cordingly Lafitte gave the General, among other 
things, 7,500 pistol flints, which were put into the 
guns of the militia. "Without this providential 
supply obtained from the Baratarians,'' wrote Jack^ 
son, "our country would probably have been lost.'' 
The General sent Lafitte down to Barataria Bay 
to defend it against the British, while others of the 
smugglers were sent to Bayou St. John and Ft. 
Pike. When the great battle of January 8th was 
fought on the field of Chalmette, two of Lafitte's 
followers, Dominique You and Beluche, had charge 



286 STOiiii':s from Louisiana- iiistoiiy. 

of Battery No. 8 and behaved with great braverv: 
The other Baratarians, wherever they were placed, 
acted with the same bravery, and Jackson was 
greatly pleased. Mr. Gayarre (the historian of 
Louisiana) tells iis that whenever Jackson, in re- 
viewing his troops, came up to any of the men from 
Barataria, he would stop and chat a while with 
them. Once during the great battle, he found him- 
self near Battery No. 3, where that skillful old 
gunner, Dominique You, w^as in command. But 
Dominique's guns were silent. ^'What, by the Eter- 
nal,'' cried Jackson, "you have ceased firing?" 

"Of course. General, of course," replied You ; the 
powder is good for nothing, fit only to shoot black- 
birds and not red coats."* 

"Tell the ordnance officer," said Jackson to his 
aide, as he galloped off, "that I will have him shot 
in five minutes as a traitor, if Dominique complains 
any more of his powder." 

When the General returned, Dominique's battery 
was blazing away. 

"Ha! friend Dominique, I see you are hard at 
work." 

"Pretty good work, too," replied Dominique 
with a chuckle ; "I guess the British have found out 
by this time that there has been a change of powder 
in my battery." 

*;rne British were called red coats on account of their uniform. 



THE LAFITTES. 287 

After the battle was over, Jackson, in his general 
orders, spoke of the Baratarians as ^'gentlemen" 
who had defended their coimtr^^ with great bravery, 
and added that the President of the United States 
should be informed of their good conduct. Jackson 
kept his promise, and President Madison gave a full 
pardon to all the outlaws for their unlawful acts at 
(irande Terre. 

Pierre Lafitte and Dominique You lived, 
in New Orleans for many years after this 
time, and there was no more smuggling at Bara- 
taria. You is buried in the old St. Louis Ceme- 
tery, where his tomb may still be seen. The epi- 
taph is in French;, of which the following is a trans- 
lation : 

"This warrior bold on land and rolling sea 
In hundred battles proved his bravery; 
Nor had this pure and fearless Bayard* known 
One tremor, though the Avorld were overthrown." 

Jean Lafitte, soon tiring of the quiet life of the 
city, went over to Texas. Here he led a wild and 
reckless life of adventure, being known as "the 
Lord of Galveston." He was finally compelled to 
leave Galveston, and died a few years later (1826) 
in Yucatan.t 

* Bayard was a famous French knight, of whom it was said that he 
was " without feai- and without reproacli." 

tThe deeds of Lafitte inspired Lord Byron to write his famous poem 
called the " Corsair.'" 



BATTLE OP NEW ORLEANS, 



In the year 1814, Louisiana was drawn into the 
war which the United States had declared against 
Great Britain, and which had been carried on 
already for eighteen months in the north. The two 
countries had quarrelled over sailors' rights and 
commerce. Great Britain had seized several thous- 
and sailors on American vessels, saying that they 
were Englishmen and not Americans. The United 
States government declared that these sailors had 
become American citizens by naturalization, but 
Great Britain answered: ^'Once an Englishman, 
always an Englishman.'' Nor was this all. Our 
trade with foreign countries was interrupted by 
Great Britain, until for a time we gave up trade 
with countries across the Atlantic, and kept our 
ships at home. But this act hurt us more than it 
did England, and we ended by declaring war. On 
sea and land we had had some success — especially 
on the sea — when in 1814 the British sent a fleet 
to the coast of Louisiana to capture New Orleans. 
We have already seen that Lafitte gave notice to the 
city of the approach of the British. 



BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 



289 



Jackson had arrived in full time to meet the 
enemy, and he was determined to keep them out of 
New Orleans. His feelings towards them were 
very bitter; for at the age of fourteen, while the 
Revolutionary War was in progress, he had been 




JACKSON'S STATUK IN NEW ORLEANS. 

taken prisoner and treated with great cruelty. One 
day he was ordered to clean the boots of a British 
officer, and when he refused, saying that he was a 
prisoner of war and could not be forced to play the 
servant, the oflflcer drew his sword and cut the boy 
so severely on his head and one of his hands, that 
Jackson bore the scars to his grave. 

In New Orleans Jackson encouraged the Creoles 
to drill, and to polish up their guns for the battle. 
Troops also came to his aid from Mississippi and 



290 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

Tennessee, and finally from Kentucky. The "Mar- 
seilles Hymn" and "Yankee Doodle" (the first 
French and the other American) were sung in the 
streets of the city, Avhile "the women at the windows 
and on the balconies encouraged their husbands, 
sons, fathers, or brothers to defend them from the 
insults of the enemy." The Creoles were eager to 
fight the enemies of their adopted country, who 
were also the enemies of France. 

The British ships first appeared on Lake Borgne, 
and, here, meeting a small naval force, placed there 
to stop them, they succeeded in defeating the 
Americans. Then finding that Bayou Bienvenu, 
leading from Lake Borgne to the plantation below 
the city, was not guarded, they loaded their boats 
with men and began to creep up this bayou towards 
the field of Chalmette. Jackson heard of their 
landing and rushed two thousand men down the 
river bank to meet them. In the meantime the 
British had made a camp, and had collected from 
the plantation houses a lot of fowls, hams, and 
wines for their supper. It was the evening of 
December 23d. Suddenly in the twilight they saw 
a large vessel sailing down the river. It was the 
"Carolina," sent by Jackson, but the British at 
first thought it was one of their cruisers which had 
come up the river. Some one cried out: "Ship 



BATTLE OF XKW OK LEANS. 291 

ahoy I what have you got to sell?" To their aston- 
ishment the ship opened fire on their camp with 
grape shot and canister, while a rough voice was 
heard to say : '^Now, my lads, load again, and give 
those tarnal Britishers another round of grape." 
As the British soldiers were rushing to the levee 
for protection, they heard their pickets firing at 
Jackson's men, who were attacking on the land 
side. Now that they had an enemy to fight against 
(for they had no cannon as yet to answer the fire 
of the "Carolina"), they bravely formed themselves 
in order of battle and went forward to meet the 
Americans. It was a sharp fight. From 7 to 9 "by 
the moonbeams' misty light," Americans and Brit- 
ish threw themselves upon each other in small par- 
ties. "After the fight was over," says a British 
officer, "I went over the field and in some places 
found two soldiers lying dead, each pierced by the 
other's bayonet." JajcJvSon lost 213 and the British 
400 men. One of Jackson's general's (General Car- 
roll) says: "On the night of December 23d, I came 
too late for the battle, about midnight, and found 
the two armies camped within 600 yards of each 
other." The British were afraid to relight their 
fires, for the "Carolina" was still on the river, and 
they passed the night shivering in the cold. 
Jackson's bold attack saved Kew Orleans. The 



292 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

British, instead of marcliiiig up to New Orleans, 
waited to bring up heavy guns from tlieir ships, 
while Jackson thus gained time to build his famous 
fortifications across the field of Chalmette. His 
breastworks were about a mile long. The British, 
having brought up some heavy guns from their 
ships, built batteries opposite to the American line, 
and strengthened them with hogsheads of sugar, 
which they found in the store-houses of the neigh- 
borhood. Not to be outdone, Jackson lined the 
o^enings^f his batteries with cotton bales. First 
of all the British, who were now commanded by- 
General Pakenham, got rid of the dangerous ^'Caro- 
lina" by throwing red-hot shot into her, and setting 
her on fire. Then, on the 28th of December, and 
on January 1st, they threw a great number of shells 
at Jackson's cotton bales, and the guns behind them. 
But cotton won the battle on both days. The 
xVmericans were such fine gunners — especially old 
Dominique You — that even the British praised 
their skill. The hogsheads of sugar were knocked to 
pieces, and the British, who hoped to advance 
against Jackson's line under the protection of their 
guns, were unable even to hold their position. 

Many pictures of the battle of New Orleans show 
a long line of cotton bales with the Americans 
fighting behind them. As we have seen, it is true 



294 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

that Jackson used cotton bales to line the embra- 
sures or openings of his batteries. A Mr. Nolte, a 
German merchant, who was in New Orleans at this 
time, says this cotton was taken from him. As he 
was a foreigner and did not wish to aid the Ameri- 
cans, he asked Livingston, one of Jackson's lieuten- 
ants, to give back the cotton. But Livingston only 
said : "If it is your cotton, Mr. Nolte, take a rifle 
and defend it.'' This Mr. Nolte refused to do, but 
he w^as paid for his cotton when the war was over. 
Where it was used in the batteries, however, it was 
sometimes set on fire by the balls of the enemy, and 
the flying particles threatened to set the powder 
magazines on fire. So most of the cotton was 
removed, and the Louisiana mud took its place. 
Thus in the great battle of January 8th, which 
w^e are about to describe, there were very few cot- 
t-on bales left. "Our line," says General Carroll, 
"from river to swamp was less than a mile long: 
it was made of clay (alluvial) four to four and a 
half feet high and six or seven feet thick. It is a 
common idea that we fought behind cotton bales; 
this is an error. Cotton was used only for the em- 
brasures (of the batteries)."* 

After the artillery battles, both sides began to 
prepare for the great struggle. Jackson had been 

*Froin Oarroirs letters in library of S. J. Swartz. 



THE STRUGGLE OF JANT AKY 8. 295 

now joined by about 2000 men from Kentucky, and 
some from the Acadian coast, until his army was 
about 5500 strong. The English had brought up 
troops until their force was about 8900; most of 
whom had fought many battles in Europe, while 
many of Jackson's men were not used to fire, and 
his whole army was little more than half that of 
the British. 

The Struggle of January 8th. 

Having learned that the British had chosen Janu- 
ary the 8th for the attack, and that they were going 
to advance up the right bank as well as the left, 
Jackson sent some of his men across the river under 
General Morgan to meet them there. Early on the 
morning of the 8th, while a thick fog rested on the 
field, the British sent up two rockets as a signal 
to their men to advance. A young Kentuckian, six- 
teen years of age, who ran away from home and 
came down the Mississippi on a flatboat, to join 
Jackson's army at New Orleans, has left us an 
an interesting account of what he saw of the bat- 
tle. *^The hour for battle had come," he says, "the 
long roll of the British was being beaten. We Ken- 
tuckians were marched to the breastworks (about 
four and a half feet high), and we formed right 
behind the Tennesseeans, who stood two deep. I 



296 STORIES FiiOM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

was in the front line of the Kentuckians and, con- 
sequently, third from the breastworks. Our men 
stood but four deep at this part of the breastworks. 
We were on the right of the line, about one-half 
mile from the I'iver and near the edge of the swamp. 
We had hardly formed in line, when our front guard 
came running in, trying out. 'success I' — our watch- 
word. There was a deep ditch all along in front 
of our breastworks, and near where I stood there 
was a bridge across this ditch. Our pickets rushed 
in over this crossing, yelling that the British were 
coming. I freely admit that right then and there 
I was scared. The hair on my head seemed to have 
a peculiar feeling — as if it were standing erect, a 
sort of pulling sensation. One of the Tennesseeans, 
just in front of me, said to one of the pickets: 'I 
don't see them (the British).' ^Look low down, 
under the fog,' was the answer. I showed my head 
to a level with the breastworks and peered under- 
neath the fog, which was rising in the sunlight. 
Just as I had made them out with their white panta- 
loons, red coats, and black gaiters, the British, like 
a cloud of grasshoppers arising, blew the charge. 
They had a speaking trumpet, which looked like tin, 
wound around like a ram's horn and probably ten 
feet long when straightened. They blew it just as I 
caught sight of them, and it seemed to me that no 



THE STRUGGLE OF JANUARY 8. 297 

man could say more plainly, 'Charge, charge, 
charge!' Then the sound was drowned by the most 
terrifying yells that I ever heard or want to hear. 
Imagine ten thousand men [there were only 5300 in 
the attack] coming on, all shouting at the top of 
their voices, while everything on our line was still, 
not even a whisper, except the short command, j^ass- 
ing from the right to the left: 'Don't shoot, pass 
it on.' " 

Jackson's men, as we know from others who were 
present, hardly showed their heads over the breast- 
works, and waited in dead silence until the enemy 
had advanced within forty yards of them. Then 
General Coffee cried out: ''Aim for the center of 
their crossbelts." * In a moment Jackson's line 
fired as if it had been one man, and then stepped 
back to reload and to give place to the men behind 
them. When the smoke cleared away, it was seen 
that the field in front was covered with w^ounded 
or dying soldiers. The brave Britishers closed 
their ranks and made another dash for the deadly 
breastworks. But it was no use. -The big-mouthed 
cannon were throwing shells, and the sharp-slioot- 
ers in five volle^^s killed or wounded 2117 British 
soldiers. General Pakenham, riding forward on 
horseback and cheering his men, was struck three 

* These belts crossed on the shoulders and met on the breast. 



298 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

times, and died under an oak tree, to Avhich his men 
carried him. At 9 o'clock, when the battle was 
really over, one could have walked across the field 
for a quarter of a mile on the bodies of the British. 
General Jackson had lost only eight killed and four- 
teen wounded! 

On the other side of the river General Morgan 
had not been so lucky. When the British landed 
on that side, he sent forward some militia to stop 
them, but these became frightened and fled back to 
Morgan's line and beyond, taking most of Morgan's 
troops with them. Some of them, it is said, ran 
twelve miles, so great was their panic. The British, 
finding that Pakenham had been beaten on the 
other side of the river, did not pursue the Ameri- 
cans very far. They thought it best to cross the 
river again and join their general. But their gen- 
eral was killed, and they came too late to be of any 
help. The bodies of Pakenham and other chief of- 
ficers were sunk in barrels of rum, to be taken back 
to England, but the common soldiers were buried 
in long shallow trenches on the battlefield. 

The British soldiers who were left gave up all 
hope of taking New Orleans, and refused to march 
up to Jackson's breastworks again. When they first 
landed in Louisiana, they had been told by their 
officers that they would eat their Christmas din- 



THE STRUGGLE OF JANUAUY .^. 299 

ner in New Orleans; bnt ten days after the great 
battle these same soldiers were glad to make their 
way through* the marsh back to their ships on Lake 
Borgne.t 

An English officer, who joined in this retreat, 
has left us an account of the sufferings of the Brit- 
ish soldiers after the great battle. He tells us that 
General Jackson did not come from behind his 
breastworks to attack the British, but his batteries 
continued to throw shells into their camp even in 
the night time. Four nights after the battle a shell 
burst over a hut in which two officers of an English 
regiment were sleeping, and the pieces cut off both 
the feet of one of the officers — one just below the 
knee and the other at the ankle-joint. He crawled 
out of the hut in this horrible condition. One of his 
feet was driven so far into the soft mud that it had 
to be dug out the following day. 

''Food," he says, ''became so scarce in our camp, 
that some days we did not have anything at all to 
eat. Once when we had a kettle of soup on the tire 
and were getting ready for our dinner, a round shell 
from Jackson's line struck the kettle and spilt all 

*Some of Jackson's Tennessee riflemen, who shot so well In the 
battle, were dark, sunburned fellows, dressed in coonskiia caps and 
coarse homespun clothes. A fine British officer, who was wounded, 
was trying to escape from the battle fleld, when one of these Ten- 
nesseeans stopped him and said, " surrender." The officer had to give 
himself up, but he remarked that it was "a disgrace for an English 
officer to have to surrender to a chimney sweep."— (See Alexander 
Walker: "Jackson at New Orleans.") 



300 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

the soup, without touching the men who were stand- 
ing around." 

On January the 18th, at 9 o'clock in the even- 
ing, the British silenth^ entered the marsh to make 
their way to Lake Borgne. As there were not 
enougii boats to carry the men down the bayou, 
most of them had to walk. It was 10 o'clock of the 
next morning before they reached the lake, and 
escaped to their boats. The path through the marsh 
was the Ayorst the soldiers had ever seen. Sometimes 
they sank up to their knees in mud ; at other times 
up to their hips, and any one stepping off the path 
was almost certain of going down oyer head and 
ears. One officer went down until only his head 
was to be seen, and in a few seconds, if he had not 
been helped, he would haye disappeared. During 
the night the soldiers struggled along as best they 
could, and when morning came, it is said that the 
whole army was covered with mud from head to 
foot. All were happy to see the waters of the lake 
and the British ships. 

The defeat at New Orleans was the worst that an 
English army had ever suffered, and when the ncAVS 
reached England, no one at first would believe it. 
The Duke of Wellington, who afterwards defeated 
Xapoleon at Waterloo, said it Avas "a Yankee lie.'' 
Of course. Napoleon, who was then an exile at 



THE STRUGGLE OF JAXUAltY 8. 301 

Elba, was glad to hear that his enemies, the En- 
glish, had been defeated. He wanted to know all 
about the sharp-shooters and their rifles. So one of 
his friends, an American, sent over to him four 
rifles used at New Orleans, They were about four 
feet long, and weighed between nine and ten 
pounds. It is said that with their rifles the Tennes- j 
seeans could knock a squirrel out of the highest/ 
trees. Napoleon was amazed when he was told of 
the skill of these American sharp-shooters, and it 
is said that if he had won at Waterloo, he would 
have trained some riflemen for his army. 

After this great victory Jackson praised the 
bravery of all the troops who had fought under him, 
not forgetting the Laflttes and the other Bara- 
tarians. When he returned to New Orleans, the 
people prepared a hearty welcome for him. The 
streets were crowded with men, women, and chil- 
dren to do honor to ^'Old Hickory," as he was 
called. Some persons even climbed on the top of 
the houses. In what is now Jackson Square (then 
called Place d'Armes), there was a gaeat arch for 
the hero to walk under. Here stood two handsome 
little boys holding crowns of laurel in their hands. 
These they were allowed to place on General Jack- 
son's head as he passed them. Beyond them at a 
little distance from one another were a number of 



302 STORIES FROM LOUISIANA HISTORY. 

young ladies, dressed in white and covered with 
white veils, who represented the States and Terri- 
tories of the Union. Each had a silver star on her 
forehead, and held in one hand a flag and in the 
other a basket of flowers. Behind them stood long 
lines of soldiers with glittering bayonets. With 
music playing and cannon booming, the General 
marched through the arch to the Cathedral, Avhile 
the young ladies waved their flags and covered his 
path with flowers. At the Cathedral door he was 
met by Abbe Dubourg, who thanked God for the 
great victory won by Jackson, and presented the 
General with a wreath of laurel. When Jackson 
had replied to this welcome, praising the courage 
of his soldiers and wishing happiness to New Or- 
leans, the crowd entered the church and a solemn 
service of thanksgiving was held.* 

*An equestrian statue of General Jackson now stands In the center 
of the square in front of the Cathedral; and on the field of Chalmette 
there Is an unfinished monument in honor of the famous victory. 



THE STRUGGLE OF JANUARY 8. 303 

ODE. 

Composed for the anniversary of the Battle of 
New Orleans; celebrated by the Charleston Rifle- 
men, January 8, 1856. 

By Henry Timrod. 

The land hath many a battle-ground 

As rich and red with crimson stains; 
But Orleans is the very sound 

To stir the blood in warrior veins : 
There the young giant of the world 

Struck a last blow at England's side; 
And the free Flag of Stars was furled 

Above the grave of England's pride. 

Than his who led, no sterner will 

E'er crouched within a human breast; 
And his was human, and could thrill 

To all that's softest, purest, best. 
The hand from which the Briton fled, 

And the bold savage learned to fear, 
Could stroke a tender infant's head. 

And tremble at a woman's tear. 

The Roman of his country's fame, 

The mighty Consul of the West, 
No stronger arm, or haughtier name. 

E'er gained a crown, or graced a crest : 
Yet the white honor of his life 

Nor blood could stain, nor power eclipse ; 
And having faced all shapes of strife, 

He died with blessings on his lips. 



304 



8T0KIKS FllO.M LOUISIANA HISTORY. 



So long as these bright arms we bear, 

May rest all spotless and unproved : 
So long, we trust, our hearts shall share 

The homelier virtues which he loved. 
But wlien the war-blast shall be heard, 

And other battles must l)e won, — 
Be Jackson's name our battle- word; 

And his great Shade shall lead us on, 



SEP 8 1905 



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